Cage
by azarathangel
Summary: When a serial killer targets mothers and their children, Brennan finds herself struggling to deal with her unwanted emotions, but as always, Booth is there for her. [BoothxBrennan] CHAPTER 11 RATING IS K just because
1. People Can Be So Cold

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. Savage Garden lyrics for 'Crash and Burn' are also not mine, but Jane and William Airington are mine! But they don't really matter, now, do they? Those are the victims, by the way. Names shall be revealed after chapter 1, but just telling ya.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks. If I incorporate any later on in this, I'll tell ya, no worries.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. Do I even need to say that for every story? It's always the same...**

**Chapters: Right now, at least four? This is the first chapter and you will decide if I should continue. This will continue to a case scenario-type story, not just fluff, though fluff is a major component of the story as a whole. But, just telling you, it is not all fluff. There will be plenty of violence and action later on in what I have dubbed, 'The Typical Reichs Scenario.' That scenario will be mostly based off of a scene in Deja Dead. If you have read her books, maybe you can figure it out. If not, or if you just don't know, all will be revealed in the last chapters. **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 1: People Can Be So Cold**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters.I was inspired by Wolfmyjic, but she doesn't know that,so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Another Note: I changed the lyrics of the first verse I mention in chapter 1 slightly to make more sense, grammatically and storywise, and in the song the last two lines of the first verse I used are "when hopes and dreams are far away and you feel like you can't face the day." Yeah, just so you know that I do know the lyrics. I like this song.**

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**CHAPTER RATING: T**

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"_When you feel all alone_

_And a loyal friend is hard to find,_

_You're caught in a one-way street_

_With the monsters in your head,_

_When hopes and dreams are far away and_

_It's when you feel like you can't face the day."_

_-Savage Garden-_

"…right humerus has been cut approximately 14.5 centimeters from the head. Cut marks indicate that a knife with a serrated edge was used, the attack coming from the left and cutting down through the bone from the front. Left humerus is identical. Ulna and radius on both sides have been snapped." Dr. Brennan paused and took in a trembling breath, trying to clear her head of the images of the woman in front of her, images from before her assistant Zach cleaned the bones… She shuddered as the clear picture of a half-skinned corpse flashed through her already disturbed mind.

"Both femora have been crushed from what appears to be a tire." Ha, appears to be… Sometimes, though rarely, Brennan wished she would allow herself to make those mental leaps Booth always made. She knew in her gut it had been a tire; the sonovabitch had run over the woman's legs with his car. She had crime scene photos to prove it; the skin peeling off of a mutilated woman's legs, black tire marks running across the fresh flesh… Brennan released a shaky breath she didn't know she had been holding as she moved inwards to the torso of the skeleton on her work table. Quickly smothering any lingering thoughts of the crime scene, she pressed the button down on her Dictaphone again.

"Ribs two through ten have been crushed and the sternum as been broken at the fourth rib junction." The torture this woman went through… so many injuries before death, and even after her neck had been snapped, as well…

"Calcaneus has been shattered as well as all metatarsals and phalanges on right and left feet. Talus, cuboid, navicular and medial, lateral, and intermediate cuneiform are broken." Brennan paused again as she felt a lump forming in her throat. She swallowed, hard, and switched her analysis from the feet up to the hands of her victim. The hands and the head were possibly the most important parts of an accurate identification, and she always left those for the end of her verbal findings.

"Metacarpals have all been snapped backwards at the base and the head of victim's left radius shows signs of a defense wound. Left radius seems to be the only defense wound on victim." Another breath, another swallow, only this time, Brennan had to angrily jab at her eyes before continuing with the preliminary breakdown of the victim's injuries.

"Head trauma induced to the occipital of skull as well as the left parietal." She cleared her throat and coughed, willing her vocal cords to stop trembling. "Mandible has been dislocated and cracked on the left. Fatal blow seems to be a cracked C1 and C2." Brennan placed the Dictaphone on the table and lowered her head.

With such extensive damage, it had been difficult to determine the fatality of each injury. Upon first seeing the skeleton, then body, she had hoped the damage had all been postmortem injury, but sadly, it was not true. She swallowed past the growing lump in the back of her throat and collected her notes and Dictaphone before moving to the next occupied table on the lab platform. Here, another skeleton lay waiting for her to scrutinize the damage done to its body, only this time, the bones were much smaller.

"Victim six is progeny of victim five…" She began before continuing to describe the infant's fractured skull and smashed ribs.

To an outsider, the auburn scientist would appear calm, collected, and apathetic. To Booth, however, his partner was a mess; she was falling apart at the seams, thoroughly traumatized, and for good reason. Their latest case involved a serial killer whose identity in the murders appeared as a set of cracked ribs and a fractured skull. He always picked single mothers with exactly one infant, and though the victim selection was similar for the most part, though the ages and appearance varied, his MO was always so different every time that it had taken the FBI three murder casesto deduce that they had a sick serial killer to deal with.

Booth watched Brennan with sad, sympathetic eyes as she started over again and again on the baby's remains. He saw her brush at her cheeks angrily, and through the soaring ache in his heart he felt a pang of fear. It was rare to see Temperance Brennan show anything but professional detachment in the lab, and tears were unheard of.

It scared Booth to see his Bones so distraught. He had always counted on her to be the level head when it came to the graphic parts of their work, for her to have the cool, level logic in the field and in the lab. With her so out of her element in this emotional state, Booth honestly didn't know what to think.

Brennan squeezed her eyes shut to fight down a wave of nausea. It made her sick to know and see that people could be so cold, be so cruel to innocent beings. A mother and child, of all people, the most innocent of them all. Children not yet corrupted by the world around them, and mothers who cared so much about their little helpless bundles of joy. The love between a mother and child, the purest of human nature. Her evidence told her that the child in the murders always died before the mother, and she could only guess that the sick person who enjoyed the feel of blood on his hands made the mother watch him kill and then further mutilate her child's body. In this case, he burned the infant before killing and skinning the mother. It was a small comfort to know that the child did not feel the fire consuming his flesh and the mother did not feel the knife as it penetrated her skin and carved through her cold, broken body.

Brennan shuddered at the mental images she unintentionally created for herself.

"Both mother and child appeared to… appear to have been…" Brennan stopped and rewound over the last part.

"Victims five and six are believed to have been… to be part of…" Brennan deleted that, too, before finally dropping the device on her clipboard. Gripping the lip of her metal worktable with both hands, the scientist closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, a lonely tear falling to the brightly lit surface.

Booth watched her try again and again to complete her analysis until she finally slammed the handheld voice recorder onto her notes. He watched her hold the table; saw her tremble as her knuckles turned white. Sure, he was equally pissed at whoever had done these inhumane deeds and he swore he would catch the guy who did it if it was the last thing he did, but at that moment, all that mattered was Tempe.

Motioning to Zach with one hand, Brennan gestured towards the bones then the storage room before gathering her things and walking towards the stairs leading down from the raised platform, her head down. As Booth watched her come closer, he saw her wipe her eyes with the back of her hand and he heard a small sniff escape her. He considered making a move to step up the stairs towards her, but she had already brushed past him to retreat to her office. Booth made a half turn towards where he saw her lab coat fly around a corner and paused. Did she feel ashamed that she couldn't finish? Did she not want him to see her like this? Booth couldn't remember the last time she had blown him off, and it surprised him that it hurt so much more than it should have.

Angela rounded the corner where her best friend disappeared to and Booth followed, hands thrust deep in his pockets and dark eyes staring straight ahead. He walked quickly and caught a glimpse of Brennan ignoring Angela and shutting the door in her face. Then Booth knew it wasn't him; it was the case. Angela's mouth opened as she stared at the offending door that was mere centimeters from her nose. The artist then turned at the sound of Booth's shoes on the linoleum to try and get his attention.

"Booth, what did you say to her? I mean, she, you, I… the door!" She stuttered, not being able to form a complete sentence in her surprise of being royally dumped. Booth spared her a glance and a word.

"I didn't say anything, Angela. It's the damn case." He said shortly before brushing past her and entering Brennan's office, softly shutting the door behind him. Angela watched the door close on her face once more and felt like pulling her hair out. She had a face for their adult victim and all Booth could think about was barging into Brennan's office for who knows what when he very well knew she could, and would, kick his ass if he tried to comfort her… Angela stopped her thoughts as a misplaced smile broke out across her face before she scurried off to squeal to Hodgins and Zach about Booth and Brennan. The face could wait until after the two had their little comfort session in Brennan's office…

Booth stood in front of the door as he watched the slight anthropologist on the couch. She was curled up on one side of the piece of furniture and had pressed her body as far as she could into the corner of it. Her head was in her arms, and she was shaking.

Booth stepped forward into the office and moved to the couch where he sat beside her, worried. She made no move to acknowledge him, and Booth tentatively reached a hand out and lightly set it on her shoulder. He felt the inconspicuous muscle in her tense at his gentle touch, but he did not move his hand. She slowly relaxed again and Booth gingerly rubbed his thumb in circles on her shoulder.

"Is it even worth it, Booth?" He heard her voice come from beneath the curtain of hair.

"Is what worth it, Bones? Our jobs?" Booth gently replied. She sighed, her shoulders rising and falling beneath his hand.

"No, our jobs are more than worth it." She told him before elaborating. "It's days like these, cases like this, just, the people who do these things that make me wonder if it was really worth the time and energy for humans to last all these years surviving natural disaster and overcoming natural selection only to turn right around and do this. We have men, women, mothers, fathers, children… So many different people who one day make a choice that not only impacts their lives for the worse, but so many other people's lives as well.

"Natural selection is the process by which individual organisms with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce. Natural selection works on the whole individual, but only the heritable component of a trait will be passed on to the offspring, with the result that favorable, heritable traits become more common in the next generation. If this is what nature is trying to do, how do such sadistic people still live? It's like there are more and more murderers out there every day, and if natural selection is not doing anything against them and the innocent are falling victim to these killers, what is the world coming to? Has it turned the upper hand of survival of the fittest over to the murderers and serial killers? Is that what is to become of us?

"Abandonment, mutilation, drugs, alcohol, divorce, abuse, rape… what's the point? Everything will just taper down to the negative at this rate…" Booth sat in stunned silence, his thumb motionless as his hand rested on her shoulder. Sure, Brennan was a pessimist, but what she just said… He was equally stunned to hear the depressed woman's voice come out so clear and calm, as though she was talking about the weather and not her dark outlook on the fate of mankind and some sort of approaching Apocalypse. Booth removed his hand from her shoulder and reached towards her head to tuck the wavy locks of reddish-brown hair behind her ear. His actions revealed closed eyes as he stared at the exposed portion of a fallen angel's face.

"Bones?" He prodded, but her eyes remain closed. Booth stood and then knelt on the floor in front of Brennan. He put his hands on her shoulders again and repeated her name, but still nothing. He slid his hands up her neck to the base of her head and he pulled her face from her arms to face him, tucking the rest of her hair behind her ear to reveal the rest of her pale complexion. Her eyelids fluttered open, and Booth found himself staring into a pair of clear blue eyes. He bit his bottom lip; her eyes were hollow and dry, showing no reaction to anything which only sent him further into his already fretful state.

"Bones, there are good people out there. You just have to look." He told her, an urgent undertone in his voice. "The bad always stands out because it's different, but the people who care the most about you are often times right in front of you." He stopped talking as a knock interrupted them.

Angela was leaning against the doorframe, her knuckles poised above the wood behind her in preparation for another rap. She chose to ignore Booth and Brennan's positions on floor and couch, respectively, and stepped into the room. Booth kept his eyes locked with Tempe's and his hand remained at the base of her head and on her neck. For once, Angela put her friend before her fantasy of the two partners together and kept a cap on her arsenal of sexual innuendos.

"Sweetie, you're going home." Someone, probably Zach, had told her about the earlier Dictaphone incident. Brennan shook her head slightly but kept her eyes on Booth's. Angela ran a hand over her face and sighed, the stress of a long day and an uncooperative friend apparent in it.

"Brenn, honey, you got here at five this morning and I'm willing to bet that one, you didn't sleep last night, thus the earlier than usual morning, and two, you've only had coffee today. Let's go." Brennan didn't bother to deny anything; it was all true after all. The brown eyes in front of her broke contact and roamed over her face, taking in the dark circles under her eyes and the pallor of her skin.

"Ger her home safe, Ange." Booth stood up, his hands lingering on Brennan and pulling her head up to remain facing him as he did so. She was still curled up in a ball, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, pulling them to her chest even tighter than usual. Booth removed one hand to brush back a stray lock of hair from her eyes.

"Get her home." He repeated. Booth ran a thumb along the length of Brennan's cheekbone in a quick motion before leaving, the feel of her skin still tingling on his hands as he exited the Jeffersonian doors.

"_Let me be the one you call._

_If you jump I'll break your fall,_

_Lift you up and fly away with you into the night._

_If you need to fall apart,_

_I can mend a broken heart._

_If you need to crash, then crash and burn_

_You're not alone."_

_-Savage Garden-_

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For those of you who thought the characters were incredibly OOC, take a look back at the progression of Brennan's emotional status and how far Booth has been able to go to comfort her within the past few episodes and compare that to the very beginning. If this was further in the future, after 'The Woman in Limbo,' wouldn't an emotional scene of this level be achievable within the next few cases?

And for the rest of you, and you people above, please review this chapter. I have the gist of what I want to do all planned out; it's simply a matter of sitting down long enough to write everything down. The more reviews I get, the more inspired I get, the more chapters I write, the faster I update!

**A/N: I hoped people can appreciate the view I had from Temperance about natural selection and the increasing crime rate. I started writing this in a generally good mood, but summer boredom got me down after a while and the depression of Temperance took a turn for the worse as a portrayal of my disappointment in my friends. So, I hope you liked this chapter and please review!**

As always, Ash


	2. Reflections of Broken Souls

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. Default lyrics for "Count on Me" are also not mine, but Jane and William Airington are mine as are Carolyn and Aaron Rockler as well as Annie and Daniel Pickett! But they don't really matter, now, do they? Plus, they haven't even been mentioned yet… those are the victims, btw.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Rating: T for now. Will go up to M later because of violence.**

**Chapters: Right now, at least four? This second chapter is more of a reflection chapter with angst-ridden fluff. Insight to the character's current emotions, really.**

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 2: Reflections of Broken Souls**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Another Note, again: Lyrics are used as a transition between POV of characters. It should go Booth, then Brennan, then Booth with Brennan. Easy as that. If there is confusion, sorry about that.**

**Random shout outs to: goldpiece, wolfmyjic, AJeff, and Tempo.

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CHAPTER RATING: T

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**Previously: **"Get her home." He repeated. Booth ran a thumb along the length of Brennan's cheekbone in a quick motion before leaving, the feel of her skin still tingling on his hands as he exited the Jeffersonian doors.

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"_I know that life ain't always good to you._

_I've seen exactly what it's put you through,_

_Thrown you around and turned you upside down and so you_

_You got to thinking there was no way out._

_You started sinking and it pulled you down._

_It may be tough; you've got to get back up_

_Because you know life ain't over yet._

_I'm here for you so don't forget_

_You can count on me_

_Cause' I will carry you till you_

_Carry on."_

_-Default_

The weather was doing a horrible job of matching the mood, Booth thought as he sat in his car. The air was cool and crisp and the sun was bravely shining through a halo of fluffy white clouds. He didn't know what he was waiting for at that moment, but he knew he would know when he saw it. Booth's fingers fiddled with the radio dial in his SUV as he waited. After a little more than five minutes, two women exited through the glass doors of the Jeffersonian, one with black hair and the other with auburn. Booth straightened in his seat as he watched artist and anthropologist make their way through the parking lot to Angela's car. The usually peppy artist led the way and Brennan trailed behind. Her head was down, hands shoved deep in her pockets against the nippy wind that blew through the lot. They both got in the car and Angela drove away towards Brennan's apartment.

Booth sat there awhile longer, thinking about the case. Three murder cases, six victims, and virtually no suspects. Forensics at the FBI building was running through sets of fibers found on the victims to try and find similarities, and they were hoping to have someone to interview within the next few days. Shifting thoughts from case to Brennan, Booth sighed. His heart ached to help the forlorn woman in her time of need, as it always did. Some would call it an obsession, Brennan called it 'alpha male behavior,' and Angela dubbed him the 'knight in shining FBI-issue body armor.' Booth, though, knew his need to protect Temperance was due to something much simpler, or complicated, depending on how you looked at it. A simple, one-syllable word, if you took the easy approach. But what more was a word than a representation of something else? The same went for love. It was simple as words go, but for most it involved the strongest of emotions, and the most complicated of situations. Booth felt he held one of the most complicated of situations.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sharp tone of his phone.

"Booth." He answered. A break in the case, we have someone to interview, get down here, blah blah blah… Booth hung up with a dejected sigh. Bones would have to wait, no matter how much he wanted to speed over to her apartment at that moment. With another sigh, the FBI agent exited the sparsely populated parking lot, it was Saturday after all, and reluctantly drove back to work. As he drove, he made a mental promise to Brennan that he would return to her later that evening, and he vowed to show her the light of human nature, no matter how dark her outlook was at that moment.

"_I wonder why nobody's waiting on you._

_I'd like to be the one to pull you through your darkest times._

_I'd love to be the light that finds you._

_I see a silver lining on your cloud._

_I'll pick you up whenever you fall down._

_Just take my hand and I will help you stand."_

_-Default_

The buildings were a blur to Brennan as Angela drove through the congested streets towards her apartment building. She vaguely recognized Angela's voice filling up the otherwise silent car, but she made no move to try to comprehend or respond to her. Angela went on talking for a few more minutes until she stopped, either finally identifying Brennan's lack of cooperation as inattentiveness, or running out of things to say that would otherwise occupy her mind and make the silence less tangible. The pressing quiet of the car gradually grew louder as traffic thinned out and Angela spoke again. This time, Brennan decided to tune in, deciding that if she was going to say something now, it might be worth listening to.

"Sweetie, I'm not going to lie." Angela began, now thoroughly captivating the attention of her companion. "I honestly don't know what to do right now, much less what to say." Angela offered a mirthless laugh in response to her own words.

"A speechless Angela, I know. Crazy, right? Well, it's true…" Angela sighed. "Listen, Brenn, if you want to talk, then I'm always here for you. I may not have anything to say on the matter, but I'll listen. I'm just out of my element here." She admitted. Brennan couldn't help but feel grateful towards her best friend. In her words there was an understanding of Brennan's need for honesty, lack of sympathy, and the knowledge that someone was there for her. The silence settled back in between the two, now awkward, and neither spoke again until Brennan broke out of her thoughts for a moment.

"Thanks, Ange." She whispered, keeping her eyes on the passing cars. Understanding was what she needed right now and Angela's honesty towards the situation and her willingness to listen was what Brennan needed just then. Angela smiled, but chose to not say anything as a less awkward, more thoughtful silence washed over the occupants of the car.

After short goodbyes and a hug, Tempe found herself standing in her apartment, back towards her closed door. A maelstrom of emotions whirled relentlessly in her heart and mind, and in short, she was overwhelmed. In her empty apartment, the constant sense of loneliness stood out even more with a painful tug at her heart. With her loneliness came the feeling that nobody could or would understand how she felt under the circumstances of the current case. She didn't even understand why it was affecting her so much. The rational part of her brain told her it was pointless to feel so strongly towards one case; she had dealt with so many others, why would this one be any different? But the other part of her mind, the one Booth had managed to coax out of hiding in the time she had known him, argued that nobody should go through that kind of torture, least of all a mother and child together.

Even more than the actual events of the case, however, was what it came to represent in Tempe's view on the world. She had seen the dark side of human nature so much in the past few days, and combined with other aspects of her life from El Salvador to the disappearance of her parents to her job, she felt baffled at the sheer enormity of all the horrible, inexcusable deeds mankind was capable of. Her soul was slowly being crushed by a buildup of stress and feelings she never conveyed, and it was finally reaching the breaking point. Though Brennan would argue that there was no such thing as a soul, Tempe knew something was breaking.

Work was her stress reliever, but what she had found so comforting, what she had begun to think of as her only constant companion in life, had become the enemy with one file slapped on her desk. As the hollow blue-grey eyes swept over the apartment, Tempe only saw the negative. It was as her outlook on life was at the moment; murderous beings dominated her thoughts along with the cold cruelty she saw everyday, and as the negative, Tempe only saw the dark in human nature for the moment. What she saw everyday, what she examined with gloved hands, was finally beginning to cancel out what little good she knew. She was finally breaking.

Feeling ashamed at her moment of weakness, Temperance clenched her jaw and strode forward. She needed to keep her hands and mind busy lest she return to her weak, emotional thoughts.

Hours of running on autopilot performing various chores found Tempe sitting on her couch in a room smelling of air freshener and Pine-Sol. And with nothing more to do, the emotions and thoughts she had been fighting off so diligently for the past few hours and past fifteen years caught her. Her options were limited in dealing with her emotions. Tempe hadn't had a lot of experience with dealing with negative, or positive, for that matter, emotions, and so her personal knowledge of dealing with it all was limited along with her options.

Angela didn't understand her; she said so herself. She couldn't take herself off the case; that would be weak, cowardly, and unheard of. She became a forensic anthropologist to give truth to people and give faces to those who would otherwise die without anything more than the mutilated bodies which their killers left them with. She couldn't cry; Temperance Brennan doesn't break down at a moment's notice because a case is trying, no, she turns her emotions off and finds the answers. The tears she shed in the barn were justified; it was dusty, she was having an identity crisis, and her world was falling apart. She handled it rather well, all things considered.

So she did the only thing she could think of, nothing. Her inner demons haunted her wandering thoughts that she couldn't control and they tore through her heart. She was alone with the monsters that had finally broken out of the cage she had so carefully constructed around them and her emotions, and they were making quick work of the floodgates that had been reinforced after many dry years. Her emotions were raw and unbridled as they tore through her thoughts and tried to escape. But she remained still, saying nothing, doing nothing, simply letting everything destroy her from the inside out. And though science told her it was impossible to feel where neurons did not reside, she was hurting. With no reaction on the outside, she cried, screamed, and hurt on the inside. And it was one of the most painful experiences she had had in a long time.

"_You know that life ain't over yet,_

_I'm here for you so don't forget._

_You can count on me cause I will carry you till you carry on."_

_-Default_

The lead had been a dead end. It had taken hours for Booth and his fellow agents to get anything out of the man, and it turned out to be nothing at all. So here he was in his car outside of his partner's apartment building, Chinese takeout on the passenger seat. Booth remembered what Angela said earlier about the anthropologist not eating anything, and he doubted she had since he last saw her.

Booth exited the car and rode the elevator to the second floor where he approached on the door with the number 2B set in the light wood. Knocking softly, he waited, expecting no one to come to the door, but allowing Brennan the chance to disprove his assumption all the same. When he heard no footsteps and the door remained closed, he shifted the box of food to one arm and fished a spare key out of his pocket. The lock clicked as he turned the key in the door, and he stepped inside.

Booth peeked towards the living room where he caught a glimpse of Brennan sitting on the couch with a blank stare. He smiled sadly to himself and moved to the kitchen to stick the food in her nearly vacant refrigerator, somehow knowing that they wouldn't get to it that night. He stepped back into the living room.

Tempe was sitting in a pair of dark blue pajama pants and a large t-shirt that engulfed her small frame. Her hair was in a loose ponytail, strands of it falling around her face haphazardly. There was a faraway look to her dark eyes, and a small frown sat on her face, eyebrows drawn slightly together. Her cheeks were dry and eyes clear, something Booth didn't expect but should have anyway. He walked until he stood at the far end of the couch away from here, and stopped.

Slowly turning her head towards the intruder, Brennan found herself staring at the most wonderfully familiar thing she had seen all day. Seeley Booth stood a few feet away from her dressed in faded blue jeans, a dark shirt, and a leather jacket in his hand. She could already smell his warm, comforting scent and felt herself relax a bit, though not much. She tried to give him a smile, but only half of one appeared on her wavering face. Booth gave her the other half and moved to sit right by her, their shoulders and thighs touching in their close proximity. She turned her face away and let out a shaky breath, trying to conceal her shaking core. But, Booth was Booth, and he knew her too well for his own good; too well for her own good, at that. He put comforting hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him, his hands holding her still.

"Bones, it's been scientifically proven that crying is healthy for the mind and it is also healing for the hurting individual." He stated as if it were true. Whether it was, she didn't care at the moment. He had just given her the opportunity to cry without shame, given her permission to let it all out and heal herself. And with his hands on her shoulders, he was telling her that he could help, that he would help. His touch conveyed a world of understanding and compassion, a promise to always be there for her. It was their mutual understanding that gave her consistancy in an otherwise unpredictable world.

Tempe felt an unfamiliar heat in her eyes along with a lump in her throat, and she knew it was going to be pointless to try and close the floodgates against the stream of emotion about to burst out of her. Still, she tried. If it was simply the case she was trying to hold back, she would have been able to do it. But with Booth giving her everything, showing her light in the dark, it was impossible to repair the dam once it was broken.

And so she leaned forward into his welcoming arms and buried her face in his shoulder, letting the hot tears run down her face and soak his shirt. No noise escaped her, but her body shook with the force of fifteen years of sorrow and hidden feelings. All the while, Booth held onto her and provided the steady anchor she needed. His hands traced comforting circles on her back as he held her tight, tighter than he ever had, telling her he would never let her go.

Booth looked down at the trembling woman in his arms and mentally sighed. It really was good to cry, though that was psychology, but he'd be damned if he told her that. All he needed was something to tell her he would think no less of her if she cried in front of him. He never did, and never would. She needed to heal; there was fifteen years of emotional scars on her heart that never healed quite right. He knew he would always be there for her, and he only hoped that she knew, as well. As far as he was concerned, she was his from the moment they met. And he was hers as well. He held her closer and her grip on him tightened in response as Booth touched his nose to her head.

"I'm here, Bones. We'll be okay." He murmured. "We'll catch this guy and it will be okay."

"_Anytime you need someone,_

_Somebody strong to lean on,_

_Well you can count on me_

_To hold you till the healing is done._

_And every time you fall apart,_

_Well, you can hide here in my arms_

_And you can count on me_

_To hold you till that feeling is gone."_

_-Default_

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Okay, there was the super cliché, very weird and hard to write chapter. It might have been a little boring for some of you, but it was necessary to write, I guess. It kind of wrote itself, so it might not be that good. Personally? I don't like it that much. But I felt the need to give everyone some more insight on the emotional state of the characters in order to establish an understanding for motivation in later actions of the story. But, please review. Really, please do. I'm aiming for more than ten reviews per chapter at the least, people!

**Next time:** A short, somewhat fluffy chapter about the night that the two go through together and more of an introduction to the actual case rather than just the injuries of the victims. The two will discuss the case and Brennan begins channeling her emotions in order to work harder on the case and find the perpetrator by becoming ANGRY! Or something like that... it might just be fluff then the case. But I want to introduce the case very soon so everyone knows what's going to be going on in the case and can decide if they like the scenario or not.

Again, please review! I am not above withholding chapters! I won't make that threat quite yet, but it's safe to say that it is implied at the moment. Review!

-Ash-


	3. Through the Night

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. Savage Garden lyrics for "Crash and Burn" are also not mine, but Jane and William Airington are mine as are Carolyn and Aaron Rockler as well as Annie and Daniel Pickett! And you know who ELSE is mine? Catherine and Harry Morrow. But they don't really matter, now, do they? Plus, they haven't even been mentioned yet… those are the victims, btw. And the murderer and neighbors and families and fathers of the dead kiddies are mine, too. I don't feel like listing them, though.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Chapters: Around five at the moment? This third chapter is just wrapping up the emotional fluff from the previous chapter and it will also give you greater insight to the case details and what they're dealing with.**

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 3: Through the Night**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Another Note, again: Wow, fifteen reviews for that last chapter? Special thanks to those who made me realize that it was actually a good and necessary chapter. Those names are seen below. The beginning of this chapter was very hard to write, though, so bear with me!**

**Thank you to: Wolfy! AJeff, britt, Ava Leigh, smartieepants, jemb, and one for Halcyon Impulsion just because she was my very first review of the story :)**

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry!**

**Warning: Long chapter :)

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CHAPTER RATING: T

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**Previously: **As far as he was concerned, she was his from the moment they met. And he was hers as well. He held her closer and her grip on him tightened in response as Booth touched his nose to her head.

"I'm here, Bones. We'll be okay." He murmured. "We'll catch this guy and it will be okay."

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"_When you feel all alone_

_And the world has turned its back on you,_

_Give me a moment please_

_To tame your wild, wild heart."_

_-Savage Garden_

Brennan found herself feeling surprisingly refreshed, albeit tired, after she had dried her eyes. She was sitting on her couch, curled up into Booth's side, and they were silent as both contemplated what had just happened. Their relationship had changed in those few moments of weakness; their current positions on the couch told them that much. Tempe's head rested on Booth's shoulder by his chest, her arm tucked snugly around his waist while his arm draped comfortably around her shoulders, keeping her close. Neither moved, both accepting the change without a fight for the moment. Both knew there would be time to talk later, but now was not the time.

Her lids began to droop as she stifled a yawn. Booth had moved his arm and was now rubbing comforting circles on her back, much like when she had buried her wet face into his shirt earlier. In her few conscious moments before sleep took her, Tempe allowed her thoughts to wander. She wondered where she would be at that moment if Booth hadn't been there. What would have happened? She decided it didn't matter anymore, because, true to his word, Booth had always been there for her, always catching her right before she hit the ground, and she had faith that his word would carry over into the rest of the partnership, perhaps lives if she was lucky.

Another yawn escaped the drained anthropologist as her eyes began to shut all the way. She was not yet asleep, but someone thought she was, and Tempe felt the man beside her press a soft kiss to her hair. Finally feeling safe, and with a brighter outlook on everything than she started with, Temperance began to drift off to sleep.

The soft, even breaths of his partner told Booth she was asleep for the time being. He was glad; she needed to rest after her ordeal that evening. Brennan had finally begun to heal, her tears only the beginning of the long road ahead. But, Booth counted on being there with her every step of the way; he wanted to be the one to comfort her, always. He hoped the trying case they had ahead of them would help Tempe learn to deal head-on with her emotions rather than bury them beneath an icy demeanor of scientific jargon and a brilliant mind. And maybe, just maybe, when those feelings resurfaced as some did that night, he would find something there reserved just for him. He knew how he felt, but his companion was the still the ephemeral enigma he fell in love with.

Said enigma shifted in her sleep, and Booth glanced down to see her snuggle further into his chest. What an odd word to use with Temperance Brennan: snuggle. Booth always thought it was a weird-sounding word, anyway, and he couldn't help but chuckle as he watched the auburn woman. He decided he liked the "touchy-feely" Bones, but it would be hard to decide between that and the firecracker she was on a daily basis. Booth sighed and smiled as he tightened his grip around her shoulders. Looking back over the past few cases, Booth considered how far Temperance had come from ice-woman to the person who he now held in his arms. He should have guessed she would be so affectionate beneath that cold exterior he had been so privileged to break through…

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The early morning sun crept across the dark rug towards the couch where it warmed the cool skin of a waking FBI agent and his companion. Booth slowly opened his foggy brown eyes, rubbing them with one hand to clear the sleep from them. His other arm had fallen asleep where his anthropologist had fallen asleep on it. Said anthropologist now lay curled up at his side, her arm draped across his stomach with her head resting on his chest, his useless arm stuck beneath her body. Booth simply lay there for a moment, enjoying how he could slowly wake up on the beautiful Sunday morning. It wasn't often he got to awaken to such a beautiful sight; forensic anthropologist in arms, streaming sunlight through curtains, and a comfortable couch beneath him. It was nice, he decided, definitely something he could get used to, but maybe exchange the couch for a nicer bed…

Booth reluctantly extracted Brennan from his grip and set her back down on the couch with the blanket he found draped over her couch. He grabbed a few manila files from his nearby bag and spread them out on her empty coffee table. Sitting back down on the couch, Booth sank comfortably into the cushions, Tempe's legs pressed into his side as he sat in front of her. He knew there was something they were missing; there always was, and that was always the key to the case. It was just a matter of finding the lead and tracking down their killer, if only it was that easy.

Flipping through a small notebook he kept with him, Booth ran his eyes down a list of similarities in the cases: all were single mothers with one son, though the ages varied; all were cut off from their families and had few friends; all lived in the same neighborhood though each lived on a different street; the streets were next to each other; neighbors reported lack of activity; murdered in their homes; neighbors have not yet been interviewed. The last bullet on his short list struck Booth as extremely odd. The neighbors should be at the top of the priority list for interviews, surveillance, suspects, etc. He and Brennan would have to do that later. The mothers were all Caucasian and brunette, ranging from ages 30-39, though their sons varied more in appearance, Booth observed as he flipped through some pictures of the living victims. He added those features to his list.

He read through the interviews with the parents and found that all of the mothers had been cut off from families for their pregnancies. This made Booth very sad, indeed. The families should have supported their daughters, at the least. He was also angry that the fathers of the children had left the small families to fend for themselves.

Selecting a file with the name "Rockler" printed at the top, Booth opened it only to immediately look away as he was assaulted with the Polaroids from the scene. Setting the gory pictures aside, he read up on the father. Angus Voigt, born in Mississippi, 33 years old, nondescript brown hair and light brown eyes, currently living in England. Booth mentally sighed as he set Voigt's records back into the folder and extracted the father's file from the "Pickett" folder.

Jeremy Russell, born in Arkansas, 40 years old, black hair with blue eyes, and currently living in Spain. Booth sighed again, this time out loud. These fathers were desperate to avoid their would-be families, Booth thought with a grim laugh. Russell had a job in the oil business and apparently his job had taken him to Spain. Booth did not delve further into the matter. His last folder had the name "Arlington" printed in bold, black letters.

Jean Fortier, born in Paris, France, 36 years old, black hair and brown eyes, living in France again. Okay, Booth thought, all of these guys now live in Europe. Perfect, that's three less suspects to investigate… He went on to review the details from each family.

The Rockler family was the first to go. Carolyn Rockler worked as a waitress at the Sadie Hills Diner on the outskirts of D.C. The Diner was a few blocks away from where she and her son Aaron rented a small home from a generous old lady who had plenty of money, and she kept the Rockler family's rent fairly low. Why such a rich old woman even lived in such a seedy neighborhood, Booth would never know... Carolyn Rocker generally kept her distance from their landlady, and Aaron always accompanied her to work. Carolyn was tall, brunette, and very pretty, Booth gathered from the picture he held. He took out the picture of Aaron and closed his eyes; he couldn't imagine how someone would be able to hurt such an innocent child. Aaron had the same large brown eyes as his father, Voigt, but his face told Booth he was definitely Carolyn's son. They had the same angular features, and both had dark, wavy brown hair. The call informing local police that something was amiss came from not the property-owner, but from a neighbor who had taken a liking to the small family. Jenny Allen lived across the street and was an aging woman who enjoyed watching Carolyn and Aaron play outside after work. The old lady commented that "no matter how tired the ol' girl looked, she always put her son's needs before her own. She loved him like I never seen love before. The world needs more people like that Carolyn Rockler, God bless her and her son." Booth shook his head sadly at the old woman's words; the Rocklers had died for no apparent reason, just as the Picketts and Arlingtons. Carolyn had been thirty years old, and Aaron only two.

One week and two days after the Rockler murder, another caring neighbor called local police to inform them that the family across the street hadn't shown their faces in two days. Annie Pickett had been dating Jeremy Russell for a while, and he cheated on her and took off after he found out she was pregnant with his child. Annie was beautiful, just like Carolyn had been. The thirty-nine year old woman had a soft face framed by curly brown hair, and her eyes were bright green. She graduated college with a major in English and worked fulltime at a local bookstore where one could buy, exchange, or sell old books. She usually took her son, Daniel, to work with her where the child could be seen flipping through old children's books with his mother looking on lovingly. The child had been four years old, the oldest of the young victims. Somehow the boy had ended up with blonde hair, apparently because Annie's mother was blonde, and he possessed the same perceptive green eyes as his mother. They had been reported missing by the Davidson family who lived next door. Arnold Davidson called when his wife, Amy, commented on the fact that the Picketts had not been around lately. Their daughter Bethany usually babysat for Daniel on Thursdays when Annie worked extra shifts, and they hadn't called that week. Mr. Davidson sent their son Benji over to the house to check on the two, and nobody answered the door. The fact that there had been another murder one street over the week before worried the family, and the promptly called local P.D. Time of death was early Thursday morning.

Jean Fortier had never been a big part of Jane Arlington's life. She thought she loved him, but then he jetted off to Paris when she came to him with news of their baby boy on his way. Jane had a harder time meeting ends, and she worked as a cashier for a grocery store in the morning and she cleaned off the tables at the Sadie Hills Diner during the evenings. She had never formally met Carolyn Rockler, though. Just like the Picketts and the Rocklers, Jane Arlington rented a small house where she and her son William lived. Jane was thirty-seven years old when she was murdered, and William had just celebrated his first birthday the week before. Jane had plain brown hair and hazel eyes, but her simple looks gave her the appearance of a natural beauty. Booth added "all attractive" to his growing list of similarities. William looked exactly like his mother; he hadn't inherited any traits from his father. With hazel eyes and light brown hair, William was an adorable little boy with huge ears that stuck out from beneath a mop of long messy hair. The story of their disappearance was much like the other two families; a neighbor had taken interest in them, they don't appear for a few days, then the neighbor calls the police. James Henry had been the worried neighbor in the Arlington's case, and he and Jane had been casually seeing each other. Henry helped her raise William, and the two supposedly knew each other from high school where they dated for two years before college sent them on their separate ways only to push them back together again. Henry called saying Jane had not been to work in two days, and they weren't answering the door. Same story, same gruesome scene, same clueless case.

Booth leaned back on the couch, Tempe's legs still curled at his back, and ran a hand over his face. He was running in circles; there was nothing new in the files besides the fact that the neighbors had not been interviewed, so he could only hope that the answer was there. So far, all the murders had occurred on Thursdays and been reported that Saturday; it was now Sunday, and they were overdue for another pair of mutilated bodies. The frustrated FBI agent turned his head to look at Brennan where she still lay sleeping on the couch.

Her features were relaxed, her placid face holding a soft smile as she dreamed. Booth smiled slightly; at least there was some place she could go and be happy. Reaching over to her, he swept a lock of hair behind her ear where it had fallen across the woman's face. It was then his phone rang, and Booth fumbled with it in his hurry to answer before it woke Brennan.

"Booth." He answered, softly.

"Why are you whispering?" It was Cullen.

"Well, sir, my partner is sleeping." Booth answered the question promptly.

"I won't ask." Cullen responded gruffly, obviously having just woken up himself. "We need you and your lady scientist to report to this address immediately." Cullen read off an address that sounded all too familiar to Booth as he scribbled the numbers on the back of his notepad. "See you all too soon, Agent Booth."

"Yes, sir." Booth hung up the phone and stared at the numbers. Then it clicked; he had turned on this street accidentally exactly one week and one day ago. He had meant to turn on Annapolis, but he hit Shartle instead. The Arlingtons had lived on Annapolis…

"Bones." Booth said shortly, the pain and anger he felt splayed across his face as his tense body nudged his sleeping partner.

"Bones!" He called a little more urgently. He was reluctant to wake her up, reluctant to acknowledge the phone call he had just received, but damn it, it was his job. He was also worried as to what her reaction would be…

"Booth, what's wrong?" She sat up quickly, jerking her legs back to her chest as if she had been burned, the sleep slowly clearing from cloudy azure eyes. Booth opened his mouth to say something, but Brennan's time with Booth had given her a greater insight to human reactions.

"There's another murder, isn't there?" All traces of sleep were gone in an instant to be replaced by anger, cold anger. Booth simply nodded a reply, glad to not have to tell her. She set her mouth in a thin line and stood up, arms crossed over her chest. Whether it was defensive or her anger, he could not tell. He only hoped it was the latter and that she did not regret their closeness, though her jerky awakening could be clue to anything.

"Bastard…" She growled so low Booth wasn't sure if he was meant to hear. She paced across the room twice before turning to him, her expression softening at his involuntary hurt look.

"Oh, not you Booth. Never you." She gave him a wane smile, though her eyes reflected lingering fear and anxiety from when she had woken up to find Booth sitting at her side. "Go back to your apartment and get ready, I just need to change and I'll meet you there." Booth shook his head and stood up.

"No, I have an extra suit in my car in case of emergency. If I could just use your bathroom after you?" He asked hesitantly. Brennan gave him a short nod, her body tense and fidgety.

"Sure, go get it. I'll just get dressed and make some coffee." She turned to walk back towards her room, but turned, still a bit jumpy.

"Um, Booth?" She said, almost shyly.

"Yeah, Bones?" He smiled at her.

"Thanks, for everything." Booth's smile grew wider as she acknowledged the night and accepted it; maybe she wasn't so above being human after all, he thought with a mental chuckle.

"For you, Bones? Anything." He grinned again and left the apartment, leaving Brennan to think about what he just told her. He was sure she could analyze to her heart's content and never figure out what he meant, just because she wouldn't want to believe it. Well, she would have to acknowledge him sooner or later, because Booth wasn't planning on going anywhere.

No more than twenty minutes later, the two were settled in Booth's large SUV and on their way to the outskirts of D.C. to see the latest crime scene. Booth glanced over at Brennan where she stared out the window, chewing on her lip.

"Will you be okay?" He asked softly. She turned to him, thinking.

"When we catch this guy, yes." She replied honestly. "Until then, no, but hopefully there won't be a repeat of yesterday…" The last part was said so quietly that Booth had to strain to catch it all. He shook his head at her, slightly hurt and angry as he jumped to conclusions.

"Bones, I know you won't want to remember what happened between us last night, but-"

"No, Booth, not that." She interrupted him. "That was, I mean… Well, that was nice." She was flustered, and Booth almost smiled at the effort she had to put into voicing how she felt. It was, well, cute.

"I really do appreciate it, Booth. I know it's hard to put up with me, sometimes, but thank you. It really means a lot to me, all the effort you put into making sure I'm okay. I, well…" She stammered, her cheeks a pale pink as she tried to conceal the blush that was the result of Booth staring straight at her. She opened her mouth to try and finish her sentence, but was silenced when Booth gently pressed a finger to her lips. Now was not the time, he silently told her. Aloud he said something else.

"Things are changing, Temperance. You know that as well as I do, and we'll get through it." He reassured her. The change in their relationship was scaring her; he saw that when she woke up and immediately tensed upon their close, rather domestic seating. With her stammering he knew she felt something, but he also knew that the time for them would come. For now, they needed to focus on the case. Brennan nodded, understanding him, and she visibly calmed down when the pressure to put things out in the open diminished. Booth reached over and took her hand in his, giving it a gentle reassuring squeeze.

"When the case is over, Bones, we need to talk." She nodded mutely, tensing again at the prospect of a heart-to-heart with Booth.

Their partnership gave them an introspective understanding where things didn't need to be voice aloud, and last night had been a huge step for them. Sure, Booth had comforted her before, but never before had she felt so vulnerable, so needy. Booth did not take advantage of her state of mind like the bastard Stires had before, and he simply held her quietly and let her cry. She could never explain how much it meant to her to just be comforted; it hadn't happened to her in a long time. Sincere comfort: that was what Booth provided her with. And despite the case, Brennan could not deny the fact that she had felt truly happy in his arms last night. Secure, happy, and relaxed. That hadn't happened in a long time.

The small house was swarming with officials when the two pulled up to the house. Booth put the car in park and looked over at Brennan again, their hands still clasped across the divider between the seats.

"Ready?" He asked. She nodded in response, accepting the gentle squeeze on her hand with one of her own. Exiting the car, Booth observed Brennan's mask fall securely back into place as she snapped a pair of latex gloves on and strode confidently, though Booth could see she wasshaking inside,to the house. It was going to be a long day, he thought bitterly as he followed her through the peeling door.

"_And there has always been heartache and pain,_

_And when it's over you'll breathe again._

_You'll breathe again."_

_-Savage Garden_

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Again, I have no knowledge of Washington D.C. so all that jazz is made up. This chapter might have seemed a bit off to most of you, but I had to give the details of the case and put the players out on the table. This is the end of the major fluff, I just had to close it up with promise of something later, and now the case will really kick into action.

This is to be my first fan fiction using a case, so go easy on me here. I have the characters mapped out, the ending scene, the murderer, and all that jazz. I just have to figure out an acceptable way to compile them into this story. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Not.

Please review! I love constructive criticism, accept anonymous reviews, and I laugh at most flames. I feel this chapter could use a lot of constructive criticism, so please leave feedback. I might want to redo this chapter, if people don't really like it that much.

**Next Time**: Interviews with the neighbors and people who called in, plus a possible connecting element! Or not, it depends on how fast I want to wrap this up. Minor fluff, because I am a major fluff-bunny and can't go without fluff, and some more squint action. Victim's injuries will be compared, and I shall delve further into case detail! Woo!

REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW aah you get the idea.

-Ash the desperate review-hog


	4. Floorboards

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. Five for Fighting lyrics for "Superman" (amazing song) and Seether lyrics for "The Gift" are also not mine, but all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Chapters: Around seven, I think. Chapter four here is the happenings of the fourth murdered families house and some more chilling information. Haha, fourth chapter, fourth family… ironic, aye? Or am I just an over-analyzer… **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 4: Floorboards**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Another Note, again: Holy hell, mate, I'm up to fifty reviews and with only three chapters! You guys are AMAZING! Keep it up! **

**Thank you to: Ava Leigh for being my fiftieth review, AJeff for being a proud mommy, wolfmyjic because she's Wolfy, and I have too much to say on that matter, and Invis for constructive criticism! **

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry!**

**Wow this chapter was fun to think about! I honestly had no idea what to do with it, but then it turned into some bloody fun, more case stuff, and a new twist in the story! Then I ruined the haunting atmosphere with fluff. Enjoy the long chapter!

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CHAPTER RATING: M FOR GRAPHICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF MURDERS AND HORRIBLE EMOTIONAL TRAUMA

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**Previously: **"Ready?" He asked. She nodded in response, accepting the gentle squeeze on her hand with one of her own. Exiting the car, Booth observed Brennan's mask fall securely back into place as she snapped a pair of latex gloves on and strode confidently, though Booth could see she was shaking inside, to the house. It was going to be a long day, he thought bitterly as he followed her through the peeling door.

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"_Hold me now; I need to feel relief_

_Like I never wanted anything._

_I suppose I'll let this go and find a reason I'll hold on to._

_I'm so ashamed of defeat,_

_And I'm out of reason to believe in me._

_I'm out trying to get by."_

_-Seether_

The hallway held the lingering smell of cheap cleaning supplies and mildew. Brennan walked cautiously down the passage, stepping over various dark stains on the floor that emitted a scent that vaguely reminded her of blood. Indeed, the whole house reeked of the salty metallic substance as well as death and decay. It was rather out of place in the small home, too.

The walls were covered in peeling wallpaper, the design faded and hard to decipher. Booth decided it used to be yellow with small blue flower-like designs on it. Though it might have been beautiful once, it was now coming off the wall in strips, revealing chipped concrete and wood beneath it. Someone had tried to hide the bare walls with small photographs, though. Pictures of a little boy and his mother were taped up along the hallway, though most had been recently slashed by a knife, blood spattering across them in an odd pattern.

Brennan noted the house was very clean and orderly, if not shabby. Where the killer had not infiltrated the domestic environment of the small home, there were little trinkets aligned on shelves in straight lines. A peek in the living room of the abode provided her with a glimpse of a ratty sofa and small toy cars in a line. There were structures of books and blocks that some cars wound around, evidence that some small boy had once played and been happy. Tempe quickly looked away from the play setting and turned back towards the lead officer in charge.

"The bodies are upstairs." He looked a bit unsure of himself, his tone questioning. Booth picked up on the man's doubts immediately and stepped forward next to Tempe.

"She's the best at her job, she sees dead bodies daily. I think she can handle this." He said quietly and forcefully. Brennan's face remained impassive as the man looked from her to the FBI agent standing protectively at her side. With an almost invisible shrug, he turned to lead them up the stairs.

Both Brennan and Booth stepped carefully as they ascended the rotting wood. A trail of congealed blood had formed to one side, and Booth was disgusted to see small pieces of what seemed to be flesh holding onto the jagged edges of some of the boards.

"He dragged the adult up the stairs." The officer in front of them said over his shoulder. Brennan mentally shuddered. The victim must have been cut up pretty badly if her skin was able to catch and tear on the wood.

Towards the top of the stairs, the pungent scent of decay grew stronger. Booth grimaced and brought a hand to his mouth, covering it with his shirt sleeve. The trail of blood led them down the hall past a small bathroom until is curved and entered a small bedroom on the left. Brennan stepped forward, undeterred by the three fingers that greeted her at the door.

"What happened here?" she gestured towards the extremities. Head officer flipped through a notebook in his hand.

"We suspect the killer dragged the victim up the stairs and into this room where he cut three fingers off, then dragged her further down the hall." A hand sweep towards the continuing trail of blood supported the last bit of information. Brennan squatted down by the fingers and turned towards the man.

"May I?" Brennan's hand hovered above one of the fingers that rested on the floor.

"Sure. Everything has already been photographed." Brennan nodded her response and gingerly removed the finger from where it stuck for a moment in the dried puddle of blood. A quick tug released it from its prison. The head officer blanched. Brennan studied the bloody end of the finger for several seconds before replacing it and picking up the other two.

"These weren't cut." She stated matter-of-factly. "It would be more plausible that the victim was dragged through the door and grabbed onto the frame with one hand. The door could have then been slammed onto her finger and the force of that combined with a strong pull from her assailant would have caused the bone to break." Brennan stood back up and carefully opened the door.

"See the edge here?" she said, pointing at the door's edge. "There's a metal strip imbedded in the wood. The edge is rusty, which is why it blends in with the tone of the wood here, but it's still very sharp." Brennan took a piece of cardboard off the floor and slid it along the metal edge.

"It's not sharp if you touch it, but if someone slams something in the door-" she placed the cardboard on the frame and closed the door. It wasn't a slam, but there was considerable force behind it. When she opened it again, the cardboard had been cleanly cut along the middle.

The officer in charge pursed his lips and crossed something out in his notepad, scribbling Brennan's explanation in beneath what he had earlier. Then they continued down the hall, still following the blood until they reached the end of the short hall. Here, the blood trail entered the room and did not come back out. Brennan reached forward and opened the door; they were immediately met with the overpowering smell of metallic blood and decay. Both FBI officer and police officer took a step back at the stench, leaving Brennan alone as she entered the room first.

It was the room of a child, the walls painted a light blue and a crude bookshelf off to one side, filled with used books. There was a small off-white crib in the corner with a chair placed next to it. Without hesitation, Brennan walked forward toward the crib and chair where two bodies sat waiting patiently for her.

A small body was resting in the crib, its facial features mutilated beyond recognition. There was a finger in his mouth, one that was too big to be a baby's. A glance at the other victim's left hand confirmed Tempe's suspicions: the killer had placed the mother's finger in the baby's mouth, or what was left of it. The adult victim's left hand was indeed missing four fingers; the three from down the hall and the one with the baby. Her thumb was still in place, though it had been twisted backwards.

A bloody story book rested in the mother's lap, the bright illustrations of happy animals tainted with dried blood. Tempe noticed the ulna, not the radius, was the arm bone facing up. Furrowing her brows, she leaned in closer to where the hands seemed to be upside down. Instead of where the thumb should have been up, the pinkie was. Her gaze trailed down to the legs where the feet were facing forwards, the way they should be facing, but the knees had bones protruding from them like large white splinters. Brennan turned back to the two men who had since entered the gruesome room.

"He twisted her." She stated. Upon receiving confused looks from both, she sighed and elaborated.

"The head here is facing forwards the way it should be, but if you look at the neck, you can see the bones pressing against the skin," she ran a finger along the bumps in the neck, "indicating they are broken. Further down here, the torso is turned towards the back of the chair; ergo the back is actually the front. Here the shoulders are normal, but the arms have been snapped so that the forearm faces forward. The junction where the radius and ulna meet is here," she touched a protruding bone junction, "meaning he broke the arms so that he could manipulate the elbow to where it faced the wrong way.

"And here he bent the femora so they face towards the crib instead of towards the back of the chair where they should be. Then here the knee joint has been torn so the knee is backwards, and then he turned the feet so they faced forwards." Brennan swallowed once and stood back up from where she had been looking at the ankle bones that escaped the skin. Booth ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

"So, you're saying this guy completely twisted her around so she was really facing backwards but appears to be facing forward and he did all of this by breaking her bones?" Booth's explanation was confusing even to his own ears, so instead he reluctantly looked at the corpse to draw conclusions for himself and the officer behind him.

"The head is forward, torso backward, arms bent backwards, legs bent backwards, knees broken so they go the wrong way, and the feet have been twisted around?" Booth summarized quickly as he diverted his gaze from the body instead focused on the stoic anthropologist.

"Yes, I just said that." Her face turned quizzical and Booth rolled his eyes.

"Okay, Bones." Brennan gave him another strange look before turning towards the crib where the tiny cadaver of what had once been a baby boy lay.

"On this one, he dismembered the victim and then rearranged his limbs." Brennan wrinkled her nose as she observed the crude job in which the killer had jammed legs into arm sockets and arms into leg sockets.

"Then what happened to its face?" Booth questioned as he came closer to the scene. Brennan shrugged and looked around for an answer. Booth turned away from the bloody face to overlook Brennan's seemingly futile search.

"Looks like someone stuck his head in a blender…" Booth callously commented. Brennan turned around and he immediately regretted his choice of words.

"You're probably right." She spoke in a monotone, holding up a blender blade coated in grisly pieces of flesh and what was left of a shattered blender cup. Before Booth could apologize, she turned back around to do a quick scan for the standard victim characteristics she got in the preliminary victim analysis.

"Victim 1 is female, looks to be in her late thirties or early forties, and could be Caucasian." Brennan drew back from scrutinizing the exposed portion of skull. "Victim 2 is male, one to three years old and Caucasian. Judging from the decomp rate, I'd say they have been dead since at least Wednesday, more likely Thursday."

"That fits with the timeline of murders we've had so far, as does the ethnicity of the two." Booth supplied.

"_Supposed _ethnicity." Brennan corrected automatically, earning her another eye roll from Booth.

"The house belongs to a Peter Billings, but someone named Catherine Morrow is renting it out." Booth read from the file he had received on the occupants of the house. "Catherine is thirty-seven years old and has a son named Harry who is one year, five months. Does that fit?" The FBI agent looked up from the summary of the two to look at Brennan. She shrugged.

"Yes, for now." She went back to squinting at the bodies. Booth, on the other hand, was doing everything he could to avoid the faces of the two. The woman's eyes had been gouged out and were resting in her open mouth, and someone had carved an elaborate game of tic-tac-toe on her cheek between skulls and some butterfly-type looking thing. The skulls had won.

"Catherine was a brunette, small for her age, and very slim. Eyes were blue just like Harry's. Harry was a big baby with really dark hair… it says here it's brown, but in the picture I can't tell if it's that or black." Booth squinted at the picture of a chubby little boy dressed in blue overalls and a red striped shirt. The boy had a big smile on his face and there was spilled vanilla ice cream down his front.

"Who was the father?" Brennan said from her position on the floor. Booth flipped through the thin file.

"Um, doesn't say. Apparently Harry was the product of date-rape."

"We need to know who the father was." Her voice was now muffled, and all Booth could see of her was one leg as she edged her way around the crib and to the floor where she was looking for god knows what.

"We could run a DNA test with the baby's blood to see if we have a match in the FBI database. Who knows? If he raped the mother, maybe he's been convicted of other crimes before, too." Brennan emerged from her journey around the floor looking triumphant.

"Okay." She agreed. "There're two gloves wedged into the edge of the crib. If they belonged to the murderer, maybe we can pull a print off the inside of them." Her smile was small and didn't reach her eyes.

"But why would they be his?" Booth wondered. She had an answer for that.

"He left everything else here. Look, here's a bloody knife, I already showed you the blender, and there's a hacksaw under the crib, too. He would need that to cut through the bones on the victim in the crib, and I doubt anyone would keep hacksaws in a baby's room." Brennan reasoned. Booth nodded, a ghost of a smile beginning to creep onto his face.

"Nice work, Bones." He praised. Brennan's lips twitched in an almost smile.

"I just need to collect some of these insects here for Hodgins. There aren't many, this is a clean house, so it shouldn't take long. Then we can go back to the Jeffersonian and go from there."

Ten minutes later, Booth and Brennan exited the room and left the rest to forensics to finish up. They were told to expect body bags containing what could be Catherine and Harry Morrow by the end of the day and no later than the next. Removing her now rust colored gloves with a snap, Brennan dropped the latex material into a bio-waste container the forensics team was using for their disposable equipment.

"So, that makes victims seven and eight." Booth mused as they approached the door. Brennan sighed forcefully beside him, causing Booth to look at her.

"You okay there, Bones?" He asked the unnecessary question.

"This man has murdered eight people and we barely have anything to go off of! Why would I be anywhere near okay with that?" Brennan gritted her teeth together as she answered Booth's question.

"Well, we haven't interviewed the neighbors and people that called the murders in yet, so maybe that will yield an answer." Booth put a hand on Brennan's shoulder and squeezed it, the tense muscle beneath her brown corduroy jacket relaxing slightly at his touch. Booth stepped away from her as they neared the door, intending on opening it for her, when Brennan suddenly pitched forward towards the old wood.

The hem of her jeans caught the edge of an old floorboard, and as she fell, Tempe twisted in the air to try and regain her balance, but it only sent her back towards the ground with her head facing up. Booth turned when he heard the unmistakable _crack_ of the wood and caught Brennan with one hand around her waist and the other on her arm.

"Clumsy much?" He grinned down at her where she rested in her arms, her body an almost parallel to the ground.

"Shut up, Booth." She scowled and tried to stand. Booth pushed her up and she knelt down on the floor to unhook her jeans from the rotting wood.

"Booth!" She shouted suddenly, falling backwards on the floor and yanking her leg free at the same time. Booth rushed to her side and stooped to her level on the floor, automatically taking her hand in his. Her face was pale, eyes dark. She said nothing more and began to crawl back towards where she had just backed away from. Booth followed behind her.

Where the floorboard had been pulled back, there was a shriveled brown eye set in flesh toned green. Brennan pulled back the rest of the board and began to work on several more. On those boards, the nails were newer and shiny, but the wood was still old and rotten and gave easily to her shaking hands.

A face stared back at Tempe, its dark brown hair falling away from a cut face and lifeless brown eyes locked on her. The skin was beginning to turn a greenish tint and was marred with various cuts. Dried blood caked the rest of the face, and the mouth was open in a silent scream. Through the decay and slashes, though, the face rang a bell of recognition in both Brennan and Booth's minds.

"James Henry…" Booth whispered softly, his breath softly blowing tendrils of Tempe's reddish hair. Henry had been the one to call in the lack of activity at the Arlington house, his relationship with Jane Arlington his incentive to be worried. Well, the devoted man must have gotten too worried and become vengeful. In his quest to discover what happened to Jane, the poor man must've gotten too close to the truth.

"Decomposition indicates death occurring on Wednesday, most likely Thursday." Tempe's voice was robotic as she began to rattle off facts, one after the other. Booth didn't catch half of them; his brain only registered his partner going into shock and hiding behind science, as she always did. Booth's hand clenched into a fist and trembled as he resisted the urge to hit something. Nine murders and they weren't even close. Henry could have walked in on the murderer while he was torturing the Morrow family, resulting in his own premature death by brutal stabbing and dismemberment. While Tempe continued to mutter science talk, Booth looked up at the small crowd that had gathered around them.

"Look around on the floors for any recent disturbances in the carpentry. Your clue should be new nails like these and protruding floorboards." Booth quickly ordered and the people scattered to find the rest of the late James Henry. Turning his attention back to the rambling scientist, Booth put his hands on her shoulders and felt her stiffen.

"That's nine, Booth. Nine. And what do we have to show for it? Nothing." She said softly. "Nothing but nine innocent people's bodies. Four mutilated babies, five murdered adults. Four families and one worried man. None of them even had the chance to live." She choked on her words, carefully hidden emotions seeping through the cracks in her voice. Booth stood up, pulling her with him.

"C'mon, Bones. We can't do anything else here." He gently pushed her towards the door, watching the floor as he went. When they exited the house, Cullen approached them from where he had been directing a reconnaissance team searching for any forced entry, footprints, etc.

"Well?" His face was grim, but it was no match for Brennan's scowl.

"Victim 7 is female and her son is victim 8. Both were mutilated and one dismembered. I found a pair of gloves that could be linked to the murderer wedged between the bedding of the crib and the railing on the side closest to the wall. Victim 9 appears to be-" Cullen quickly interrupted Brennan's words.

"Victim NINE?" He gaped, turning to Booth. "What is the meaning of this?"

"There was a third person beneath the floorboards, sir. We believe he is James Henry, the man who was romantically involved with Jane Arlington and called in her disappearance." Booth quickly summarized for the deputy director. Cullen ran a hand over his face, clearly exhausted.

"Ah, well, good work, agent." He shook his head slightly.

"Dr. Brennan found him."

"Well then, good work." Cullen reiterated before walking away to talk to an agent about a possible entry used by the murderer.

Brennan continued to head towards the SUV parked in the midst of other empty Washington P.D. vehicles, Booth close behind. She walked around to the passenger side and instead of getting in, leaned her forehead against the black metal, closed her eyes, and crossed her arms over her chest. Curious, Booth changed his route from the driver's side to Tempe.

"I told you, Bones. We'll catch him." Booth leaned against the side of the vehicle so he was eye level with the anthropologist.

"Sure, Booth, we'll catch him. But how long till then? How many more people will die?" Her voice was flat as she spoke, her words slightly muffled by her close proximity with the car. "And even when we do catch him, there will be others. There will always be others." Booth saw her bite her lip and he put a hand on her shoulder, the other finding its way to her chin. Turning her to face him, he looked straight into her deep blue eyes, his gaze never faltering.

"That's why we have to keep going, Bones. Because there will always be others. But with us around, at least there will be fewer. Not all humans are bad, you know that, Bones. Some of us care, and we fight for those innocent people."

"Who, Booth? Who cares enough anymore?" Her tone was dead; hopeless as yet another three murders chipped away at her resolve and whittled at what was left of her optimism.

"You, Bones. You and me, we give hope to those who have fallen beyond caring and we put fear in those who don't want to care." Booth's eyes were smoldering as he spoke. "I care, Temperance. We can make the difference."

The sincere words brought Brennan back from the dark corners of her mind and she sighed, biting her trembling lip again. Booth's hand slid from her chin to her other shoulder as he drew her into his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around her small body. Tempe's arms were still crossed across her chest, and as he pressed her tightly to him, she felt herself give into his touch, his strong grip enveloping her. His scent flooded her mind, his presence a comforting blanket smothering her frantic thoughts. Slowly she felt herself relax against him, giving into the security he constantly provided for her whether it be a touch, a word, or even a smile.

"We should go." Tempe murmured, even if she did not want to follow her own suggestion. She felt Booth nod, his chin tapping the top of her head. She slowly raised her head from its comfortable position on his chest and looked into his dark brown eyes, his face radiating care.

"Alright." He smiled, pulling her once more to his chest with a quick squeeze before releasing her. Brennan sat for a moment longer, her mind surprisingly calm for a moment. She felt something as she watched Booth walk around the car, a feeling she remembered from a long, long time ago. She tried to place it, but the return of her disquieted thoughts chased it away before the ancient emotion could be named.

Brennan stepped into the car and shut her door as Booth turned the key in the ignition. She was uncomfortable; the feeling that she would fall apart any minute now was discomforting enough, but with people like Booth and Angela discreetly, well, not Angela, discreet was not a word in the woman's vocabulary, watching her as if she was about to fall apart did not help her any. It was enough to admit to herself that she was beginning to fall apart at the seams. Hopefully, getting closure on this case and sorting out where she stood with Booth would help.

"_I'm just out to find_

_The better part of me._

_Wish that I could cry,_

_Fall upon my knees._

_It may sound absurd, but don't be naïve._

_Even heroes have the right to bleed._

_I may be disturbed, but won't you concede,_

_Even heroes have the right to dream._

_It's not easy being me."_

_-Five for Fighting_

He watched them from his window, the anthropologist and dark FBI agent that threatened to turn his game upside down. But the man was not worried, no, he was excited. When people like James Henry and Jenny Allen got in the way, it was a simple matter of finding the proper instrument to silence them. Permanently. The middle-aged man chuckled darkly to himself as he turned back into the house, whistling a merry tune as he went about his daily routine. Yes, the FBI agent would be an issue, but the lot of them were worthless without the anthropologist.

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OOOO the fluff went out the window with the appearance of the murderer watching them!

Okay, I shall be gone for the next three days on a short trip, so hopefully I'll get more writing done, but I don't know if I'll be too busy. That means give me a few extra days before the next update.

Again, thank you to all the lovely reviewers! Fifty reviews for three chapters? Unheard of in my world! I love you ALL! Please leave another review for me, and it maketh me happy and I writeth faster!

**Next Time: **Our favorite dynamic duo journey to a few streets over to interview the kindly old neighbor Jenny Allen. But, ho, what will be waiting for them there? More is found out about the killer, and there is danger on the horizon for other kindly neighbors! I'm debating whether or not I'm going to put the big break in the case in this next chapter or chapter six… huzzah for mindless debating with one's self! If only we all had a Special Agent Seeley Booth to calm our fighting thoughts, if only for a minute.

PLEASE review! I like constructive criticism and I drink up praise like nectar and ambrosia! Thanks to those who have reviewed so far, keep it up, I mean it, and thank you to those who will REVIEW THIS CHAPTER! I will find you –evil eye-

Take care all you lovely reviewers! -dangles chocolate-covered Booths in the air-

-Ash


	5. Proximity

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. 3 Doors Down lyrics for "Away from the Sun" are definitely not mine, though I love the song, but all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Chapters: Around seven, I think. Chapter five is not as gruesome as chapter four, sorry about that one folks, but we see more of the murderer and find out a little more about the Morrow family. **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 5: Proximity**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Another Note, again: Holy hell, mate, I'm up to over sixty reviews and this is only the fifth chapter! Keep it up! **

**Thank you to: Wolfy for a 'Bravo,' AJeff for being inspiration as my fanfiction mommy , smartieepants for keeping her fingers away from the speed dial button, and all the other reviewers! **

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry!**

**I wrote this chapter while sitting in a car on a long, annoying car trip in the rain. Peeved about the trip, so some sad stuff in this chapter. Also, this is kind of a nyeh-nyeh chapter compared to the others, so bear with me as we delve further into the case! REVIEW!**

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**CHAPTER RATING: T**

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**Previously: **He watched them from his window, the anthropologist and dark FBI agent that threatened to turn his game upside down. But the man was not worried, no, he was excited. When people like James Henry and Jenny Allen got in the way, it was a simple matter of finding the proper instrument to silence them. Permanently. The middle-aged man chuckled darkly to himself as he turned back into the house, whistling a merry tune as he went about his daily routine. Yes, the FBI agent would be an issue, but the lot of them were worthless without the anthropologist.

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"Dental records confirm that the man beneath the floorboards was James Henry." Brennan popped the x-rays of the skull's mandible out of her light box and set them in a manila file. She then took the official x-ray given to them by Henry's dentist and placed it back in his dental record folder, though he wouldn't be using it ever again.

"Here's his file…" Booth was flipping through yet another manila folder, only this one was much thicker than the dental ones. "Weird, his full name is James Henry Allen. You know the house he's living in? It's owned by some lady named Jennifer Allen who lives over on Valley Forge." Booth chewed his upper lip as he thought, his mind running through all connections they had in the case.

"Wait, like Jenny Allen?" Brennan surfaced from a sea of papers on the table she was working at in the lab. "Ms. Allen lives over on Valley Forge."

"Wasn't she the one who called in the Rockler disappearance?"

"Yes. She lives across the street from their house and rents out the Rockler's place, too…" Brennan said slowly, more puzzle pieces falling into place just as quickly as they were forming in Booth's mind.

"Oh shit…" Booth muttered. "C'mon, Bones, we need to go check on Ms. Allen." Booth left the lab platform and grabbed Brennan's coat out of her office, returning to the bottom of the stairs.

"To interview her?" She traded the lab coat for her heavier black one.

"Hopefully." Booth let the implication hang in the air as they left the Jeffersonian, side by side.

Booth's cell phone rang just as he pulled the black SUV from his parking spot.

"Booth." He answered shortly. Tempe silently stared out the window as she listened to Booth's half of the conversation. There wasn't much to hear, but it kept her mind off of the possible scenario that awaited them at the older Allen house. Her clinical detachment had been failing her thus far in the case and she doubted it would kick in as they drew closer to the turn off of Glenmark that would lead them to Valley Forge. She vaguely heard Booth snap his phone shut through her musing.

"We found a match for Harry Morrow's father." Booth told her as he turned right onto a street Tempe missed the name of.

"Does he live in Europe?"

"Surprisingly no." Booth chuckled despite the situation, glad to see some of his partner's humor return. "Guy named Jonas Dion. Forty-five years old with black hair and dark eyes, and he lives in a federal prison." Brennan turned to face Booth for her next question.

"How'd he end up in there?"

"A few months after Harry was born, he was convicted of two murders and as of now, he has one attempted murder charge that hasn't been tried yet."

"Back to square one." Brennan turned back around.

"Yep," Booth sighed. "Maybe ol' Ms. Allen will shed some light on our suspect list."

"What suspect list…" Brennan grumbled. Booth reached over and put an arm on her seat, nudging her shoulders slightly.

"We'll get one, Bones." He removed his arm as they pulled off of Glenmark onto Valley Forge. "Here we are." Jenny Allen's house was the second from the corner and Booth smoothly parked the car beside the curb as they pulled up in front of it.

Both exited the car and walked up the well-groomed path to the front door. Booth knocked loudly on it before stepping back and waiting. After a minute or so, Brennan felt her heart rate begin to rise as her breath quickened. What if she was already dead? Would they have victim number ten to deal with next? The upstairs curtains shifted slightly and she calmed. Booth seemed to notice too, for he halted his movement towards the door for another pounding.

When nobody came to the door, the FBI agent brought a fist crashing onto the dark wood once more.

"FBI, Ms. Allen! We need to talk to you!" He called. Brennan closed her eyes and slowly exhaled, desperately trying to bring her emotions back in check. Ms. Allen was old; she just needed time to get to the door, right? Booth noticed her anxiety and put a hand on her arm, squeezing it slightly. She offered a small smile in return.

Booth reached for the dull metal doorknob and turned it. The door swung inwards and Booth cautiously stepped forward, drawing his gun as he went. Tempe was close behind him, one hand hovering above his broad back as they made their way inside the old building. The hallway stretched all the way back in the house before it was intersected by another hallway which led to either side of the house. A musty smell emitted from the carpet beneath their feet and the floorboards creaked as the two crept towards the foot of the stairs.

A loud crash reverberated through the house as the front door slammed shut behind them. Booth quickly whirled around and yanked Tempe to his chest, holding her snugly against him while aiming the loaded gun over her shoulder towards the noise. She was stiff in his arms; this wasn't the comforting embrace they had shared earlier. When there was nobody to greet them at the door, Booth lowered his arm slightly, but did not release Brennan. She stepped away from him, gently pushing as she regained her personal space. Booth rechecked the safety on his gun, making sure it was off, before turning back to the staircase, anthropologist in tow.

"Bones, I want you to go check upstairs, okay? Be careful and-" Booth began before Brennan's cutting tone stopped him.

"I can take care of myself." At first the agent was hurt until he realized his partner was talking not only to him, but to herself. Her gaze was focused on a point beyond his shoulder, so Booth shrugged the bite of her words off and directed her up the old stairs once more.

With Brennan ascending the flight of steps, Booth turned back to the task of securing the lower level. He slunk across the musty carpet to the end of the hallway, looking down each end of the perpendicular passage. Deciding to go left, he quickly found that the rooms were all empty.

The right hallway held an office, the kitchen, and a small sitting room. All were sparsely decorated despite the old lady's bank account. Entering the kitchen, Booth was just rounding a small island in the middle of the linoleum floors when he heard a small scream come from upstairs and the kitchen door slammed. Booth whipped around as a scraping sound came from outside the door before he heard footsteps scurrying down the hallway.

Charging at the door, Booth jerked the knob to find he couldn't get out. He stepped back to the center of the room and ran at the door, lowering his shoulder until he came in contact with the wood and flew out into the hallway. A chair soared across the floor from its position blocking the door and it fell on its side in the middle of the hall. Booth looked up as the front door slammed once again and he vaulted the large chair on the carpet.

Booth was torn; he had Temperance upstairs and a possible suspect either in the house or running down the street. Booth began to move up the stairs, but throwing his personal desires aside he ran out the front door after whoever it was that locked him in the kitchen.

The street was just as empty as the hallway in the house. Booth jogged down to the sidewalk to look further down the street past the neighboring hedges and saw no one. Turning back to the left, he spied an old green truck trundle down the main road and a red convertible zip past it. Traffic was normal. Just as he was about to run back into the house, a man turned onto the street with his dog in the lead.

The man was of average height with dark hair and he was breathing hard. The dog strained against the leash, pulling the man with him along the empty street. Booth licked his lips and sighed before approaching the man and dog, his gun still in hand. The man's eyes went wide when he saw the tall, dark man in a suit approaching him with a cocked gun, and he didn't relax when Booth flashed his badge at the man.

"Did you see anyone leave this house just now?" Booth's tone was commanding as he stared down at the cowering man.

"No, sir." His voice shook slightly, but he seemed to loosen up a bit when he learned Booth was looking for someone else.

"Do you know Jenny Allen?"

"Old Ms. Allen?" The man seemed to perk up at the mention of something he could talk about. "Sure! I bring her paper to her every morning. She's a nice old lady." Booth began to worry that the person in the house hadn't left at all.

"Name?" Booth questioned.

"Jonathan Ranier."

"FBI, Mr. Ranier." Booth handed him a card. "We'll be contacting you later. Where do you live?"

"My house is the one right behind Ms. Allen's, sir." Ranier replied. Booth nodded.

"Thank you, Mr. Ranier. Expect a call."

"Anything I can do to help, Special Agent Booth." Booth started to jog back towards the house, his fears for Tempe increasing with the tick of his watch.

"Mr. Booth?" an unsure voice followed by an impatient bark called out to him. Booth turned around, watching the large golden retriever begin to pull Ranier down the sidewalk.

"What's wrong with Ms. Allen?"

"I can't answer that, Mr. Ranier." Booth turned again and sprinted back into the house, gun raised as he bounded up the stairs two at a time.

Upon reaching the top of the rickety flight, Booth stopped and quietly stepped onto the landing. He walked slowly down the hall, and however much he wanted to simply kick every door down and find his Bones, he followed protocol and checked each and every room he passed as he snuck down the hall. When he got to the last room on his right, Booth allowed a smirk to cross his face as he stood at the right of the door, his back pressed against the wall and hand on the knob. Throwing the door open, Booth stretched his arm back out and swung into the room.

The barrel of the gun hit someone with a small _crack _as he entered. The person fell back on the floor, the muzzle of the gun following as Booth brought the gun level with the person's head.

Tempe was lying back on her hands on the floor, a bruise forming on her cheek as she stared into the endless black of the loaded gun that was aimed in between her eyes. Booth mentally kicked himself as he lowered his arm, Brennan's sharp blue eyes following it down.

"Sorry, Bones." He held a hand out to her to help her up. Brennan studied it for a moment. After much hesitation, she finally put her hand in his and he effortlessly pulled her to her feet. Booth noticed an empty look to her eyes, worse than before. Fear took hold of his heart and he put his hands on her shoulders.

"Bones?" He said to her face. Her eyes did not focus on his but remained locked on a point beyond him.

"Victim ten died of asphyxiation. Hyoid bone expected to be broken upon further inspection, suspected time of death is one hour ago…" Brennan spoke in a robotic voice, eyes wide and shock written all over her face. Booth shook her shoulders, willing a response out of her but none came as an emotionless façade fell across her face.

"Victim's identity appears to be that of Jennifer Allen." Finally, Booth turned towards the rest of the room, his eyes sweeping the layout and occupant. His gaze finally settled on the far corner where Jenny Allen was hanging by her sheets from a ceiling beam.

"Wrists and ankles broken at the joints as well as elbows." Brennan's drone continued as she described the suspected breaks in various bones Booth didn't bother listening too. He was hypnotized, no, horrified by what he saw in the corner of the room.

The old lady had a large red X painted across her chest and her arms hung at odd angles from her body. The lower arms flapped around uselessly from a broken joint and her hands seemed to stretch the skin as the dead weight put pressure on the rest of the arm as her lifeless body twisted in the air. Her lower legs did the same thing as they hung from shattered knees, the leathery old skin straining against the weight. Jenny Allen's eyes bulged from her eye sockets and the skin of her neck sported black and purple bruises all around it as well as the rest of her body. On the whitewashed wall beside the dangling body, red paint dripped down the wall in an eerie manner.

"They got too close," was written in squiggly letters, the words stretching across the length of the wall. The paint was still wet, that much was obvious as the globs of red rolled down the wall to the wooden floors. Booth removed his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Cullen.

As it rang, he kept a close eye on Brennan. She had no reaction to the situation other than her short scream. At that moment, she just stood near the door where Booth had accidentally knocked her back with the butt of his gun. Her pale cheek was now covered in an ugly, and most likely painful, bruise. She hadn't even raised a hand to touch it, nor had she made any noise as Booth smacked her with his gun before. She was withdrawing into herself and was numb. Absolutely numb.

"Cullen." His deputy director's gruff voice answered, snapping Booth from his worrying thoughts back to business.

"We've got another one."

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Back at the Jeffersonian, Booth was once again on his cell phone as Brennan gave out instructions to her team.

"I need the Davidsons put under close watch. No, they haven't done anything that would provoke our killer yet, but we need to keep them alive. Too many people have already died." Booth paced back and forth as he gave out orders for extra security around the Davidson house on River Drive, the Pickett's old street.

"Angela, finish the facial reconstruction on victim eight. The autopsy report has pictures in it so you can use those for some of the finer measurements if you need them." Angela nodded and turned back to her dark room to finish putting the data into the Angelator for the victim they believed was Catherine Morrow.

"Zach?" Brennan turned to her assistant.

"Yes, Dr. Brennan?" He puffed his chest out, eager to please his teacher.

"The skull of victim nine has been cleaned and I need you to place tissue markers on it so Angela can insert the data into the machine after victim eight." Brennan instructed. Zach nodded and set off to retrieve the baby's skeleton from the bone cleaning technician.

"I'll continue with the bugs to determine time of death for the two victims." Hodgins said before Brennan could say anything. She nodded her approval and turned back to Booth as he clicked his phone off, leaving Hodgins to his bugs.

"Any news on the glove from the crib?" She questioned, her voice just as flat as it had been at the Allen house. Booth resisted the urge to shake her, just to get a reaction.

"We pulled a partial print from the inside of the glove, but it isn't that helpful. There were a ton of matches for the partial and someone is sifting through the results right now, trying to narrow it down. But if the guy isn't in our system, we won't have much luck with it." Booth explained before telling her about Jonathan Ranier. "I'm having one of my guys run a neighborhood plan over here so we can locate his house and contact him. I'd like to know more about Jenny Allen." Just then, a courier arrived and handed Booth a roll of paper. Booth thanked him and walked with Brennan into her office to spread the plan out on her desk.

"Okay, we have murders on four streets, all coming off of Glenmark. Glenmark runs north to south and the others go east to west. Shartle is the street furthest to the north, then Annapolis, then River Drive, and the southernmost street is Valley Forge." Booth pointed out each street as he went before plucking a yellow highlighter from the cup of pens and pencils on Tempe's desk. "Here on Shartle is the Morrow house" –Booth highlighted the house on the plan- "and the Arlington's live on Annapolis here." Booth dropped the pen to the paper once more.

"James Henry lives here." Brennan offered her own input as she pointed to the house next to the Arlington one. Booth chose a different color highlighter and colored that piece of property in, too.

"Okay, the Picketts live here on River Drive at the end of the street." Booth colored in a house with yellow before picking up the pen he used on Henry's house. "Here is the Davidson's house, too."

"And Jenny Allen and the Rocklers live on Valley Forge." Brennan picked up the yellow and selected the Rockler house while Booth filled the Allen property with the green highlighter he used on the Davidson and Henry houses.

"Ranier said he lives right behind Ms. Allen." Booth tapped the pen on his lower lip as he and Brennan studied the plan.

"There's no name on that house." Brennan placed her finger on the house that should have belonged to Jonathan Ranier. Booth picked a blue highlighter out of the cup and circled the house.

"Well, maybe he gave me the wrong place…" Booth mused as he and Brennan searched the flimsy paper for Ranier's name. When they found nothing, Booth took his phone out.

"Maybe he rents a house." Brennan continued to peruse the paper while Booth waited for the agent on the other end of the line to pick up.

"Welks? This is Booth." He began to pace across the office as he spoke. "I need to find a Mr. Jonathan Ranier."

"That's kind of broad, man. Got a location?"

"Yeah, he should live on River Drive off of Glenmark. Remember the Allen house I needed the neighborhood plan for?"

"Yep."

"Should live in the house right behind that."

"5943 River Drive?" Welks read from his office. Booth bent over Brennan to check.

"That's the one."

"Hold on let me pull it all up. Want me to see if he lives in the area if that's not it?"

"That'd be helpful. He might be renting the house, too, so look into that." Welks mumbled a reply, engrossed in his computer. Booth kept the phone to his ear and continued to pace, waiting for Welks to pull what he needed from the FBI database.

Brennan had since abandoned the sheet of paper and was pulling her email up.

"Bones, what are you doing?" Booth sighed as he watched her flick through junk mail and the rest of her inbox.

"Need I remind you I have other duties here at the Jeffersonian, Booth? Before this case, I had a skeleton suspected to be from the Iron Age. I recently had Zach send samples to a lab in California for a carbon-fourteen test. I'm checking to see if the results are back." She continued to scan through the multitudes of documents, pausing to delete spam. When she arrived at one particular email, her finger hovered above the delete button when the subject line caught her attention.

The sender read 'God,' but that wasn't what made her blood chill. The subject read 'Ms. Jennifer Allen.'

"Booth?" She said evenly, her voice never wavering.

"What, Bones?" Booth sighed.

"You might want to see this." She told him. Booth walked over behind her chair, his chest brushing her back as he leaned forward towards the screen.

"I don't care about some Iron Age-" he started before Brennan selected the email that was currently plaguing her thoughts.

"Oh. Open it." He said, though the command was unnecessary. Double-clicking on the file, a page opened and took up the entire screen. Booth's eyes shot open and he glanced down at Brennan, searching for her response to the message. When there was none, Booth let his gaze travel back to the offending screen.

Several pictures of Tempe filled the screen. One was her exiting the Morrow house, and in another, she was with Booth as they made their way back to his black SUV after discovering the body of Jenny Allen. There were several more, but the real kicker of the message was displayed at the bottom. One line of script had Booth feeling his chest constrict and breath quicken with fear. The same line sent Brennan further into herself, her eyes hollow as ever.

"You are too close," was typed in elegant script across the bottom of the screen. Booth reached around Brennan and took control of the mouse, navigating the pointer and clicking until he brought the email address up.

"It's a disposable hotmail account." Brennan said, her voice betraying nothing. Booth's eyes darted from the screen to Brennan's face. How could she remain so calm when her life was being threatened? At least before, like with Kenton, she had some outward response! Booth swallowed at the thought of his Bones becoming victim number eleven.

"Booth?" Welks' voice crackled back over the cell phone. Booth shook his head slightly and turned some of his attention back to the working man across the line.

"What do you have for me, Welks?"

"You sure the name he gave you was Jonathan Ranier?" Welks was unsure as he asked his question. Booth heard him clicking the mouse in the background.

"Positive." Though distracted, Booth's voice boasted his confidence.

"There's nobody named Jonathan Ranier living on River Drive or any other street close by." Welks responded. Booth's full attention was now on the conversation he was having and he tore his gaze from the computer that had Temperance in a trance.

"What?"

"Nobody, Booth. I tried other names that sound similar, I tried similar spellings and all that, but there isn't anyone with a name close to or being Jonathan Ranier in the surrounding neighborhood. I checked and double checked, man." Welks went back to clicking through the neighborhood from his computer.

"What about the house?" Booth demanded, eyes flicking from a hollow Tempe to the computer screen. He was beginning to feel sick. Was it the murderer he had been talking to and he never knew it?

"Empty since 1976."

"_Can anyone tell what I've done?_

_I miss the life,_

_I miss the colors of the world._

_Can anyone tell where I am?_

_I'm so far down, away from the sun_

_That shines to light the way for me_

_To find my way back into the arms_

_That care about the ones like me."_

_-3 Doors Down_

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Okay, there's chapter five! Not as gruesome, more technical stuff than anything else and information on the case as well as a rather chilling ending, I hope.

NOW for a lengthy response to a review I received from an anonymous reviewer with the name "laura." In her review, she brings to attention the fact that Brennan does not deal with flesh because she is a forensic anthropologist. This is my response:

Yes, she doesn't do flesh, but in various episodes, actually, more like most of them, there is flesh on the skeletal remains, though there is little. Brennan identifies remains, correct? And when certain remains are mutilated/burned/marred beyond recognition, wouldn't it be up to people like Brennan to identify the remains? Maybe I've been reading too much Kathy Reichs, but though forensic anthropologists are specialists in the human skeleton, they are usually brought into cases where a normal autopsy is not possible or severely limited so the bones must be examined to obtain answers. Answers to questions such as identity, manner of death, and more importantly, postmortem mutilation or other damage. Bodies that are decomposed, burned, mummified, skeletal, and dismembered would be examples of what a forensic anthropologist would deal with. They can identify a manner of death by using the bones and studying fracture patterns to determine what caused particular trauma to the bones and individual in question. Besides, when there is flesh on the skeleton, such as in the woman in the airport episode, it gets cleaned and the bones are laid out on the lab tables for analysis. I believe it was "the superhero in the alley" or something when we see Zach removing a tray of bones from what appears to be a florescent lit machine and he comments that the solution he used wouldn't cause certain lesions to appear on the bones, and they discovered the kid had leukemia or something... I'm digressing, back on topic.

The point is, the bodies in the Morrow house in my story were mutilated. All features were unrecognizable, there was bone showing, and there was decomposition to be dealt with. Also, the murder was related with Brennan's current case where she dealt with severely burnt victims and the skeletal remains of those, as stated in chapter one. Under the circumstances, Brennan would be required to work with the victims. A pathologist would do the autopsy and gather what was needed before the bones were to be cleaned and sent to Brennan for skeletal analysis.

Well, there you have it. My argument to the fact that Brennan doesn't deal with flesh and the fact that my story isn't "inaccurate" as the anonymous reviewer says it is.

**Next Time: **We find a vital clue that the late Catherine Morrow's body has been hiding! There might be more fluff, might be a recovering Brennan, who knows? But there will be more case goodness! WOO!

Okay, please REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW! I have a couple more chocolate Booths, but when those run out (cough Ava cough) I shall be getting the Furbies out to go make people review. They are a fearsome force, and I don't think you will enjoy having them breath down your back while you write reviews for me! so, review! Thanks for reading; I hope to get the next chapter up sometime soon!

I really want to break the 100 review mark, so I beg of you! REVIEW! Oh, and you know how I mentioned reviews make me write faster? That is still true, but for bad news for you guys, I am gone all of July every year without a computer or any kind of internet access, therefore hindering my ability to post anything, which means no update if I don't finish by July.

-Ash


	6. Empty Apartment

**Story: Cage **

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. Yellowcard lyrics for "Empty Apartment" and Linkin Park lyrics for "Numb" ain't mine though I love both songs, but all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine. **

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks. **

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think? **

**Chapters: Around seven or eight, I think. Chapter six is more of the case and some nice Brennan angst, Booth comfort. All for you, Ataea! **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature. **

**Chapter 6: Empty Apartment **

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash **

**Another Note, again: I still want to reach the 100 review mark, and I'm leaving in July, so if you want me to finish this by then, I need lots of reviews to keep me motivated! **

**Thank you to: Mommy Anna, smartieepants for the cookie, Mickey Ryan for not sending the Wiggles after me, Ava for apologizing for eating all of my chocolate Booths, and Ataea because I wrote this chapter while thinking of her special needs in a fic ;) **

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry! **

**End of this chapter inspired by a review I got from Mickey Ryan, so thanks for unintentionally doing that! **

**SUPER LONG CHAPTER **

**There is fluff, hurt, and all that jazz in here. It was a difficult chapter to write, and some of it might be confusing i.e. the time sequences, but sorry! It's an update, please, be happy! **

**THANK YOU IMLOOPY for telling me how to get stuff posted when the document manager is messed up! This is up because of imloopy, everyone. Go read 'The Boy at the Building Site,' it's amazing.

* * *

**

CHAPTER RATING: T

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**Previously: **"What about the house?" Booth demanded, eyes flicking from a hollow Tempe to the computer screen. He was beginning to feel sick. Was it the murderer he had been talking to and he never knew it?

"Empty since 1976."

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_"Caught in the undertow, just caught in the undertow. _

_I'm tired of being what you want me to be, _

_Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface. _

_Don't know what you're expecting of me. _

_I've become so numb, I can't feel you there. _

_I've become so tired, so much more aware. _

_Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control _

_Cause everything that you thought I would be _

_Has fallen apart right in front of you. _

_And I know, _

_I may end up failing, too." _

_-Linkin Park_

The deep azure eyes that used to light up with excitement, confusion, or anger were lost to him, a missed memory he constantly searched for but was quickly learning he wouldn't find soon. Booth was worried; Brennan had become a shell of herself with the past few case developments from the gruesome Morrow murder to Jenny Allen's murder to her own impending doom. He had been bugging her more than usual, just trying to get some reaction out of her. He didn't even care if that reaction was his ass being kicked; at least it would prove there was still some spirit left in Brennan.

"I finished the sketch of victim nine, Brenn." Angela stepped onto the lab platform, her sketch pad clutched tightly to her chest. "Who would so brutally murder a child?" She whispered as she handed a photocopy of her drawing over to Brennan's waiting hands. Booth shook his head sadly.

"That's what we're trying to find out, Ange." She said, her face a stony mask. Booth removed the small picture of Harry and his spilled ice cream from his pocket and placed it next to Angela's drawing. Angela gasped when she saw the glossy photograph, her questioning of how anyone could kill such an innocent boy beginning anew.

"He's so young." She stated. Booth only nodded before placing the small picture back in his pocket.

"You got the drawing exact, Angela. Good work. I'm going to take this back to my office to put it in with the rest of the simulation printouts and drawings." Booth spoke first to Angela before turning to his partner. "I'll be back later, okay Bones?" Brennan nodded.

"I'm going to go look through the autopsy reports for victim nine. I received a message from the head pathologist earlier and I never saw what it was about." The anthropologist turned and strode off towards the morgue to collect the report.

There was nothing new in the thorough report, Brennan noted as she flipped through the forms and notes. So why had the pathologist left a memo on her desk? Turning to the room where they kept certain parts of the bodies refrigerated, Brennan pulled out the drawer with the case number for Catherine Morrow's body on it. Besides the normal items one might expect, there was a small case of test tubes. Curious, Brennan slipped a pair of gloves on and extracted the rack of vials from the drawer.

Setting the tubes on a table, Brennan flipped to the last page of notes in the report and read the last few lines scribbled in. Looking back to the tubes in front of her, she was able to see small samples of dried blood, flesh, and hair through the frosty glass. The report told her that the autopsy technician had set these samples aside from where they had been found under Catherine Morrow's nails. Brennan felt a twinge of excitement stretch through her chest, though it did not show, as she hastily set the rack back in the drawer and ran out of the room to the morgue phone out in the hallway. She quickly dialed a number.

"Dr. Jake Specter, here." An old man's rough voice said.

"Dr. Specter? This is Dr. Brennan." She replied.

"Hello, there, Tempe. Did you finally get my message?" Specter asked.

"Well, kind of. I knew you called me, but that's it."

"Come up to my office and I'll explain." Specter hung up and Brennan sped down the hallway and up one floor to the pathologist's office. She knocked quietly on the glass door before slipping inside.

Jake Specter was one of the older pathologists at the medico-legal lab and was intimidating if one did not know the old man. He was around six feet tall and had a wiry frame with a frizz of white hair surrounding his head. Glasses rested on his large, bird-like nose and the man wore an almost constant scowl.

"That was fast." His back was turned to her as he spoke. Tempe approached the chair in front of his desk and sat, feeling much like a child at the principal's office in the large room, though she doubted any school principal would have posters of bodies and anatomy textbooks lying around their office.

"The samples found beneath victim nine's fingernails?" Tempe ventured, voicing her thoughts immediately. The man finally turned, his mouth crinkling up in a smile as he regarded the young woman with paternal affection.

"So, you've already taken a look." He stood and walked to a filing cabinet on the wall, his long fingers nimbly flicking through several files until he reached the one he was looking for. "The DNA extracted from the samples did not match that of the victim, so I had Allie take it all out from under the nails and put them in test tubes." Allie Vail was his autopsy technician. "I thought they might be useful in your investigation."

"They will be." Tempe took the paper he handed her and studied the figures. "Thank you." She stood and tried to hand the paper with the DNA results back to the old doctor.

"No need, Tempe. Those are photocopies." He waved them away and walked to the door to see her out.

"Thanks again, Dr. Specter." She said quickly before hurrying back out the door to call Booth. Jake smiled again as he watched her go before turning back to his office to finish filing his autopsy report on the little victim known as Harry Morrow.

Back in her office, Brennan set the DNA papers down on her desk and picked up the phone. Dialing Booth's number, she waited as it rang.

"Booth."

"If I send possible DNA samples over, can you get them bumped to top priority and run them through the FBI database for a match?"

"Who, what? Bones, what are you talking about?" Booth responded in confusion.

"The autopsy resulted in the finding of dried blood, hair, and skin under the fingernails of Catherine Morrow." Brennan told him quickly.

"It's not hers or the baby's?"

"No. If she was trying to protect herself or the baby-" Brennan started.

"-then she could have scratched the killer. It's a long shot, Bones, but if we have an existing DNA fingerprint in the records then this could work." She could hear Booth pacing back and forth on the other end.

"Have them check for both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA." Brennan instructed as she stood and put Jake's DNA paper results in a folder.

"Huh?"

"Nuclear DNA is more individual whereas mitochondrial…" Brennan stopped, not in the mood for a biology lesson. "Just do it. I'll explain later if needed." Brennan hung up the phone and went back to check the samples out from the morgue and send down to the Bureau.

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Later that day, Booth bound up the lab stairs with a folder of papers in his hand. Brennan looked up from the skeleton she and Zach were working on when she heard the beep of his card granting him access to the platform.

"Keep looking for a fracture pattern, Zach." She said before walking to an empty work table, waiting for Booth and the results. He set the folder down on the table and she quickly opened it and snatched the first few papers, eyes scanning over the words. Then, Brennan spread the various papers out on the table in small piles, some order to the scatter of information.

"So, what does all of this gibberish mean?" Booth questioned as he picked up a piece of paper filled with numbers. Brennan reached over and turned the paper right side up in his hands.

"It's complicated. What did they tell you?" Brennan responded as she flicked through the information.

"They couldn't find an exact match for your nuclear DNA request, but there was something for the mitochondrial stuff." Booth set the paper down that he held and glanced at Brennan, hoping to see a spark of excitement, disappointment, triumph, _something _in her expression. It remained blank, though.

"That's useful, too. Who's Rachel Stevenson?" She read from a stack of paper clipped information, a picture of an older brunette woman on top.

"Back up, Bones." Booth plucked the sheet of paper from her hands and set it back down. "What is mitochondrial DNA and why is it important?" Tempe straightened from her position bent over the information and looked at him.

"Nuclear DNA is unique to you. That's the stuff your teacher tells you about that's in the nucleus of your cells." She began, struggling to simplify the complex information. Booth nodded in understanding. "Mitochondrial DNA, on the other hand, will be passed down to you from your mother. You have knowledge of basic cellular anatomy, correct?" She asked.

"Yeah, I remember the basic stuff." Booth replied.

"You get practically all of your organelles from your mother because in fertilization, the egg contains all of those whereas the sperm will only house chromosomes since it is so tiny." Brennan picked up a piece of paper. "Mitochondria are organelles that can make their own proteins. In order to do this, they must have their own DNA separate from the nucleus of the cell. See this?" She pointed at a series of the letters A, T, C, and G, though there was no particular order to them. The same line was repeated beneath it.

"Yeah." Booth nodded.

"The first line is the mitochondrial DNA sequence of Rachel Stevenson and the second is the sample we obtained from beneath Catherine Morrow's nails."

"They're the same." Booth pointed out. Brennan nodded.

"Since you get organelles from your mother, your mitochondrial DNA will be identical to hers. That set of DNA is passed through the maternal side of any family." Booth nodded again.

"So, you're saying that Rachel Stevenson and whoever the samples were from are related?" Booth asked, beginning to catch on.

"Yes. Now, who is Rachel Stevenson?" She picked up the paper clipped stack again. And once again, Booth took it from her.

"So, the killer could be Rachel Stevenson's son?" Brennan sighed.

"Son, nephew, brother, sure." She replied.

"Son."

"We can't rule out any of the possibilities unless we have concrete evidence to suggest that it could not be a brother or some other relative other than a son. A nephew would suggest that Rachel Stevenson had a sister and said sister had a son. Who is Rachel Stevenson? Do we have her family history?" Brennan made a grab for the papers.

"Son it is." Booth replied. He could have given her the information that would support the fact, but more than anything he was trying to annoy her, just to get some rise out of the robotic anthropologist.

"Who is Rachel Stevenson?" Brennan asked for the fourth time. Booth sighed and tossed the stack of paper at her.

"She's dead now, but she had one child that we know of. A son. She had a sister who died a few years ago, the sister never married, and Rachel was convicted of child abuse in 1975 when the kid was twelve years old. Son was born in '63, so he should be forty three now." Booth informed her. Brennan was now deftly flipping through the Stevenson file.

"Who was the child?" She questioned.

"Guy named Michael Stevenson, but we haven't been able to locate him."

"He could be the killer."

"He's number one on the suspect list, but without a location, we can't bring the guy in. Besides, he could be living under an assumed identity in Texas for all we know." Booth was obviously frustrated. "The guy dropped off the face of the planet in 1984. We haven't been able to find tax records, mailing addresses, phone bills, anything that could link us to him." Brennan sighed and ran a hand over her face, clearly exhausted. Booth finally acknowledged the deep circles under her eyes and the drooping eyelids that kept almost closing.

"Sweetie…" A warning voice came from behind them. Both turned to see Angela with her hands on her hips, foot tapping the floor.

"I told you if you yawned I was sending you home." Angela stated. Brennan opened her mouth to say she hadn't, but just then a small yawn escaped her. Angela smirked.

"I know you hate psychology, sweetie, but mention a yawn and anybody will do it." Booth kept his mouth firmly shut as he felt the pressure in his head build in preparation for doing exactly what Angela had just predicted.

"Saw it, Booth." The artist grinned and turned back to Brennan. "You, home, now. It's almost eleven and I bet we are the only ones left besides Zach and Hodgins. Go home." Angela said again before turning on her heel and walking back across the platform to where Hodgins was working on the computer.

"C'mon,I'll walk you to your car." Booth draped an arm around Brennan's shoulders and pulled her away from the table. "I'll clean this up and stick it in your office before I leave, okay?" She did not protest, nor did she agree. She was numb as ever, and it was beginning to annoy Booth now that he was past the worried sick stage. Sure, he was still a bit frightened for her emotional state, but this was something they should be tackling together, not separately.

"Thanks, Booth." Brennan muttered as they neared her car. Booth removed the arm from her shoulder and began walking backwards so he still faced her as he made his was back to the building to clean up the papers they had left out on the table.

"Anytime, Bones. Call me if you need anything, alright?" He asked as he continued his steady retreat towards the lit institute. He saw Brennan nod as she opened her car door and he turned back around.

"Booth?" Her voice was unsure as she said his name. Booth halted and turned back around.

"Yeah?"

"Can I get a ride to my apartment?" She asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

"Sure, but why?" Booth walked back towards her.

"Someone slashed my tires." She said calmly as if it were no big deal. Booth sped up his walk and knelt down beside her rear tire. Someone had indeed taken a knife to each tire and made long cuts at the tops of them.

"Bones, this is not good." Booth was at a loss for words, so instead he stated the obvious. Brennan merely stared, raising her eyebrow as if to say 'duh, Booth.'

"Okay, that's not what I meant, but, Bones? You have a serial killer who's mad at you. How can you be so calm?" She shook her head ever so slightly and didn't answer, choosing instead to walk back into the building. Booth groaned and ran to catch up.

"You know what? Leave the papers, I'm sure Angela will get them. Let's just get you home where you're safe." Booth pulled her on the arm and she changed directions, following him to his car.

"You don't have to treat me like a child, Booth." She yanked her arm back from him and sped up until she was walking right beside him. Booth sighed as the first raindrops of a storm began to fall.

"Sorry, Bones. I'm just a little worried, like you should be."

"Well I'm sure you're worried enough for the both of us, so why should I waste energy doing the same?"

"Because it would prove you are indeed sane."

"How would being paranoid prove I'm sane?" she shot back at him.

"I don't know. Maybe the fact that a normal person would feel a little worried that a serial killer doesn't like them?" Booth retorted.

"A normal person would also know that it would be a waste of time worrying over something that can not be prevented and would instead devote time and energy towards doing something about their predicament," was Brennan's response.

"No, Bones. That's just you." Booth rolled his eyes. She made no reply and they finished the rest of the walk to his car in silence, the rain gently misting them.

"Here we are." Booth broke the slightly awkward silence of the car as he pulled up in front of Brennan's apartment building. She hesitated for a moment before putting her hand on the door handle.

"Sorry I snapped at you." She said suddenly. Booth was rather taken aback; that was sudden. Brennan rarely apologized. He must have looked more surprised than he thought, for Brennan looked down and hurriedly stepped out of the car. Booth rolled the window down.

"Bones?" She turned around slowly, unsure of herself. Booth gave her an easy smile and she relaxed a bit.

"No need to apologize. You may be an anthropologist with super powers, but serial killers are a threat to all." Brennan smiled back at him, and Booth felt his heart soar knowing he put that beautiful smile on her face after all that had happened. It didn't quite reach her eyes, but he could deal with that later. Wet tendrils of hair stuck to her face in the steadily increasing rain, and Booth couldn't help but smile again at her oblivious beauty.

"See you tomorrow." He gave her another smile and watched her retreating back until he saw she was safe inside the lobby. Then he drove back to the Jeffersonian to gather her papers together.

The wooden bowl beside her door shifted as Temperance set her keys in it. Slipping her shoes off, Brennan removed her wet coat and padded into the kitchen where she set some water on the stove to boil. A mug made its way onto the counter and she then selected a teabag of vanilla Chai tea from her cupboard.

And because a watched pot never boils, Tempe then navigated her way into the living room and selected a CD. Soon the soothing melodies of a Native American flute were busy weaving their calming blanket over the apartment and Brennan poured her boiling water over the teabag, stirring as she walked to her couch and sat. Breathing in the aroma, she took a sip and stood again to close the blinds, wanting to close herself in to her personal sanctuary. Taking another sip of her tea, Brennan lowered the first set of shades and moved on to the next window.

A loud shatter pierced the quiet of her apartment as a brick flew through her window and clipped her shoulder. Brennan whipped around, dropping her mug on the floor where it shattered into millions of tiny pieces. The remnants of her window were scattered across the ground along with the torn blind as an icy wind whipped through the broken window and another brick flew through the window next to the one she stood at. Brennan fell to the ground, her hands over her head as she knelt in the glass and another brick crashed through the window above her, glass and water raining down on her head.

The piece of brick landed heavily on the ground beside her as glass slowly dropped from where it clung to the window frame. When the tinkling shards ceased to fall, Brennan cautiously raised her head from the ground and crawled across her floor to the corner of the room, away from the windows. There she sat with her knees drawn to her chest, waiting for another five minutes. When no more projectiles burst through her walls, she shakily stood and bent to untie a piece of thread that held a wet sheet of paper down onto the third brick.

_"You will go no further," _was the note's message.

Brennan dropped the sheet of computer paper as if it had burned her and watched if flutter harmlessly to the glass-covered floor. She could hear a car door slam outside and immediately stepped back from the window as a bolt of lightning streaked through the sky, backing up until her back hit the opposite wall. She faintly heard the elevator door ding down the hallway, and without shoes, coat, phone, or keys, she flew out the door and ran in the opposite direction of the elevator, flying down the stairs as fast as her legs would go as the door for apartment 2B flew open down the hall.

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Booth stepped quietly into Brennan's office and set the folder down on her desk. He was about to leave, but he noticed her email was still up on the computer. Walking over and sitting down in her chair, he began to close the program down when he noticed another email from 'God.' Intrigued, and also a bit worried, Booth opened the email to be greeted by a series of disturbing pictures.

The first was a zoomed in shot of someone's window. Booth didn't recognize it at first, but he recognized the woman standing in it in the second shot even through the rain that fogged up the picture's image. Brennan was holding a mug of some steaming beverage and was in the middle of closing her curtain. The third picture gave Booth a view of one of her windows shattered and Brennan dropping her cup as she stared at the window. The final one was a shot of all three windows broken and no Brennan in the window.

Booth leapt up from the chair and ran out Brennan's office door, sprinting through the rain to his car. He jumped into the vehicle and shot out of the parking lot, almost crashing into a speeding taxi turning into the parking lot as he sped towards Brennan's apartment.

Booth didn't bother using the elevator and instead charged up the flight of stairs in the building and flew down the hall, skidding to a stop in front of Brennan's apartment door. The door was cracked open and Booth drew his gun before entering the apartment.

The entire place was a mess; papers were everywhere, rain water had entered through the broken window, and the living room floor was littered with glass. Booth gingerly stepped over the rubble to the window where he found three bricks lying on the floor. The middle one had a piece of string draped across it and a soggy piece of computer paper lay beside the brick. Booth knelt on the floor and quickly read the runny message, his anger and fear growing with each word.

The bedroom yielded no Brennan, nor did the kitchen, bathrooms, or any other room in the apartment. Booth made his way back to the living room where he found he was able to trace the path Brennan took to the door, if she had left. Standing at the middle window and looking towards the door, all the mess had a central axis: the path leading to the door. The place hadn't been trashed, Brennan had simply thrashed her way to the door. Booth shivered slightly as a cool breeze whipped through the room from the open window, chilling the rain droplets on his neck and hair. Had she been kidnapped or had she left voluntarily?

Booth walked to the door where he found her shoes lying on the ground, her coat hanging up, and her keys in the little wooden bowl on the table by the door. Her purse had been flung on the couch in the living room. Booth's heart sped up while he tried to think where she could be if she wasn't there. Would she have left without anything? It was now pouring outside and she was without a coat. He quickly dialed Cullen to tell him about the bricks and note before closing the apartment door and heading back out to his car. A look at missed calls showed him Angela had been trying to call him for the past ten minutes.

"Angela? It's Booth." He spoke quickly in the phone as he backed out of his parking spot, windshield wipers going at a furious rate.

"Hey, sweetie, I've been trying to contact you!" Angela sounded tired. "Brennan just ran in here a while ago looking really freaked and she locked herself in her office and I can't get her out."

"Is she hurt?" Booth put more pressure on the accelerator as water sloshed onto the sidewalks.

"She came in without any shoes or a coat and her feet were bleeding." Angela was borderline hysterical, now. "There was blood, her shirt was ripped and there were cuts on her face! What's going on, Booth? She was covered in glass!"

"She didn't tell you that our serial killer is planning her funeral?" Booth said in disbelief.

"She doesn't like me worrying over her." Angela denied being informed. Booth swerved into a parking spot and jumped out of the car, locking it over his shoulder as he ran towards the Jeffersonian building.

"Tell her I'm coming. Just parked." He hung up the phone and dashed through the swinging glass doors, slipping slightly on the wet linoleum as he rounded the first corner.

"Okay, tell me exactly what happened!" Booth nearly fell over Angela as he exited the elevator to find the angry artist waiting for him. He slowed his sprint to a speedy walk and gave her a quick description of the pictures and notes.

"How does she do it…" Angela muttered under her breath. "Good luck getting into her office; I think she barricaded it with her filing cabinets." Booth mumbled a quick 'thanks' before raising a hand and banging on Brennan's door.

"Bones, if you don't unlock the door, I'll unlock it for you!" He shouted as he continued to bang on the door.

"How?" was her reply. The flight of Booth's fist came to a screeching halt when she opened the door, revealing half of a cut face. The healing bruise from Booth's gun did nothing to help her appearance.

"I'd figure something out." He said gently. She smiled slightly, barely noticeable.

"I know you would." Her back was to him as she retreated back into the office, a blanket draped over her shoulders. Booth remembered what Angela had said about her hands and feet and noticed Brennan was limping slightly as she walked to her couch.

"No shoes?" He closed the door behind him. She shook her head and sat, tucking her feet under herself and the blanket as she sank onto the piece of furniture, her hair wet. Booth sat down beside her and took one of her hands from its position in the blanket.

"You've got a lot of glass in here." Booth observed, turning the small hand over in his own large ones. She pulled it back.

"I noticed."

"Want me to help get it out?" he offered.

"No, thank you." Brennan replied, leaning back into the couch. "I already got most of it out."

"You're still covered in it." Booth picked a piece of the shining sharp material from her hair to prove his point. She shrugged.

"Sweetie?" Angela popped her head into the room. Brennan looked up at her best friend. "You can spend the next few days at my place, okay? Until your apartment gets cleaned up and you can get new windows." Angela said from the door. A ghost of a smile graced the anthropologist's face.

"Thanks, Ange, but-"

"That's an order, not an offer." Angela smirked. "Just come get me when you're ready." Brennan nodded in response and Angela left again. Thunder rumbled outside as rain continued to pound the ceiling.

"How did you get here? Walk?" Booth took in her sopping hair and shivering body.

"Taxi."

"You didn't have your purse."

"I had leftover money from lunch in my pocket."

"Oh…" They lapsed into silence for a minute before Booth spoke again. "I'll drive you back to your apartment so you can get some clean clothes then drop you off at Angela's." He said with finality and stood. Brennan shrugged and walked to a small closet, fetching a spare pair of sandals from the bottom of it. Booth noticed her feet had been crudely wrapped in bandages. She kept the blanket firmly clutched around her shoulders until she found a jacket in the closet and pulled that on, discarding the now wet cloth.

"That for those all-nighters here at the lab?" Booth joked, trying to lighten the mood. She nodded and fell in step beside him as they walked out of her office. Brennan quickly explained to Angela where they were going.

"I'll be waiting at home." Angela turned to go back to her office and lock up. Booth put an arm around Brennan's shoulders like he always did and pulled her close to him. She leaned away at first, but she was cold and decided the warmth was welcome for the moment. Booth was still surprised at the lack of emotion at her whole situation. Her windows had just been smashed by bricks and she was still as robotic as ever.

The sky was choked with black clouds, the fluffy white ones of a few days ago gone. It was close to midnight and the rain was so heavy that the only visible light on the street was the lightning. Streetlights were a thing of the past, for the time. Booth stopped to dig his keys out of his pocket, the rain obscuring his vision. Brennan stopped a little further up the sidewalk, arms crossed tightly over her chest against the wind and rain. A car's headlights cut through the downpour as it sped by, a wave of water crashing into Brennan and sending her sideways. Booth looked up just as she stumbled and ran up to her, yelling at the car driver as he went.

"You okay?" he placed a hand on her shoulder, the drenched material soaking his hand. She nodded shakily, shivering under the cold water. Booth clenched his jaw; he would have expected something after that.

"No, you're not." He shot at her, his patience with her robotic attitude snapping. She whipped her head around to look at him, eyes beginning to spark.

"You can't keep burying your feelings forever, you know." Booth said angrily. "You have to be feeling something, Bones! I know you're upset, but we should be handling this together. You once told me, 'I'm your partner, so let me be your partner.' Well, Temperance, now I'm saying it. Let me be your partner." She kept staring at him, never blinking.

"For Christ sake, stop acting like a damn robot!" He barked. She remained still.

"Sorry." Brennan mumbled.

"No, you're not." It was then he noticed she was shaking more violently than before, and his gut told him it wasn't from the cold. Any qualms about snapping at her that had been absent earlier returned full force and he tentatively placed an apologetic hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, jerking her way out from under his gentle touch.

"Damn it Booth, I'm scared!" Her hands were now at her sides, hands curled into fists. "I'm terrified, okay? Is that what you want to hear? That I admit I'm scared as hell and falling apart and all I want to do is curl up under a blanket and sleep till this is all over?"

"Bones, I-"

"I don't want to feel anything right now, okay? That would be so much easier, but this is hard and I'm scared. I've seen what this man can do, what he _has_ done, and I don't want to end up another victim nailed to the wall." She was screaming now, her voice echoed by the thunder that ripped across the sky chasing the streaks of lightning.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" Booth tried to start before she cut him off again.

"Didn't mean what, Booth? What? Didn't mean to make me feel? I already have enough emotion to deal with, thank you." She shot at him.

"No, Bones, I-"

"You what? Cause it sure sounded like you wanted me to feel something." Her voice dropped dangerously, venom seeping from her words as she glared at him from beneath a curtain of hair. Booth dropped his head and sighed; he got what he wanted, right? Fear wasn't something Brennan admitted to easily, but he shouldn't have been so hard on her.

"I'm sorry you're scared, Bones. I'm sorry you're in the middle of this, I'm sorry you have to deal with these victims hands on, I'm sorry you're being targeted by a serial killer, and I'm sorry I yelled at you." Booth raised his head to see her softened expression. She raised her hands back up and crossed them over her chest again, stepping closer to him as she took in a shaky breath.

"I just want to feel safe." Her voice was but a whisper, a fragile sound the wind threatened to whip away as it blew through the streets. Booth stepped towards her, privileged to see the vulnerable side of Temperance, the raw emotions that were tormenting her reflected in her eyes. He put his hands on her shoulders and she raised her head slightly to regard him with those beautiful clear blue eyes.

"You're safe with me." He said softly, brushing a wet tendril of hair from her face. She all but leaned into his touch, closing her eyes with the comfort that flew threw her body when he touched her face.

"I know." She admitted. Booth pulled her to his chest and wrapped his strong arms around her shoulders. Brennan turned her head so she was safely burrowed in his neck, sighing contentedly.

"And as long as I'm around, I won't let him get you." Booth whispered gently.

She knew she was safe with Booth; every touch, every look, every smile made her feel like she belonged. Here she was, standing in the pouring rain at midnight with a serial killer after her, but all she could think about was Booth. Sure they had their differences, but the man had taken her over, body and soul. He constantly plagued her thoughts, banned only by the nagging fear of the serial killer, but even then he found a way back to her heart, back to her thoughts. And she knew he would never willingly leave her, nor would she leave him.

"Thank you, Seeley." She said quietly. Booth pulled back with a smile on his face, her newfound openness with him sending his spirits beyond the dark clouds above them. She stepped reluctantly from his arms, though they still remained close to each other. Booth reached out with a hand and put it on the back of her head, pulling her close to him once more and kissing her forehead gently.

"That's all it takes, Bones. Just feel. I told you, things are changing, but if you continue to hold onto the past, then we're going to get nowhere." _Just let me in._

_"Take you away from that empty apartment. _

_You stay and forget where the heart is, _

_Someday if ever you love me you'd say it's okay. _

_Waking up from this nightmare _

_How's your life, what's it like there? _

_Is it all what you want it to be? _

_Does it hurt when you think about me? _

_And how broken my heart is. _

_It's okay to be angry and never let go, _

_It only gets harder the more that you know. _

_When you get lonely if no one's around, _

_You know that I'll catch you when you're falling down. _

_We came together but you left alone, _

_And I know how it feels to walk out on your own." _

_-Yellowcard_

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Thank you invis for being nit-picky! ;)

Okay, the end of this chapter was soooooo hard to write! Fluff central, though… leaves that sticky, cotton candy like aftertaste in your mouth, aye? This was definitely the longest chapter yet, so you better review in appreciation of my effort to give you a lot of good stuff! Hopefully this had all the elements in it, at least, I tried. And that deserves a review, doesn't it? TRYING to give you something enjoyable to read? AND this is a REALLY fast update! Well, it would have been but the STUPID DOCUMENT MANAGER is screwed up. Not to mention a lengthy update, too...

No long arguments, here, for once, so I'll leave you to your reviews while I go plan chapter seven. Chapter SEVEN! I haven't written anything this long since I wrote 'Water Lily,' my first Bones fic EVER! Time flies, aye? Again, pleeeeeeeeeze review! I leave June 30th for a whole month, so that means no updates because I will be stuck without a computer! (Shocking I know, I'm going to get computer withdrawal syndrome) More reviews mean more chapters which means more updates which means more story! Although I have no idea when I'll finish this, you still want to find out who the murderer is, aye?

I made more chocolate Booths after Ava ate the others, so that's even MORE incentive to review! Plus I found an old Furby, so that's more to add to my growing army of Furbies who go and breath down people's necks to make them review my stories… -evil laugh-

-Ash


	7. Anxiety

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. Something Corporate lyrics for "Hurricane" aren't mine, nor are the lyrics for "Without You Here" by the Goo Goo Dolls, though I love both songs, but all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Chapters: I've done some general chapter planning, so nine at the moment. All is subject to change, of course! Chapter seven here is some more case development, Booth action, a suspect, and edgy Brennan! **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 7: Anxiety**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Another Note, again: Now that I've bypassed the 100 mark by three or something, let's go for 120! Yay for goals! **

**Thank you to: everybody who has reviewed so far! Special thanks to Anna, as always, just for being there and giving me detailed reviews and telling me to post today lol.**

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry!**

**LAST UPDATE UNTIL---AUGUST LAST UPDATE UNTIL AUGUST---LAST UPDATE UNTIL AUGUST**

**Shorter chapter than last time

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CHAPTER RATING: T with some disturbing imagery

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**Previously: **"Thank you, Seeley." She said quietly. Booth pulled back with a smile on his face, her newfound openness with him sending his spirits beyond the dark clouds above them. She stepped reluctantly from his arms, though they still remained close to each other. Booth reached out with a hand and put it on the back of her head, pulling her close to him once more and kissing her forehead gently.

"That's all it takes, Bones. Just feel. I told you, things are changing, but if you continue to hold onto the past, then we're going to get nowhere." _Just let me in._

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"_Your love's a gathered storm I chased across the sky,_

_A moment in your arms became the reason why,_

_And you're still the only light that fills the emptiness,_

_The only one I need until my dying breath_

_And I would give you everything just to_

_Feel your open arms._

_My head lies to my heart_

_And my heart it still believes._

_It seems the ones who love us are the ones_

_That we deceive._

_But you're changing everything,_

_You're changing everything in me."_

_-Goo Goo Dolls_

His hands twisted over and over as he paced the dusty hallways. The room to his left held old memories of belt buckles and the one to the right of cigarette butts. The hall held memories of running, screaming, crying, and yelling. The entire house was his unpleasant memory, his daily nightmare that he returned to. Yet he did not leave. It gave him power to know he could achieve what she could not. She could never break him, yet he kills. Most would be weak and not return to a nightmare such as the one he walked through, but not he. No, he was the strong predator who returned to his weakness and stuck his nose up at it. He took his weakness and used it to fuel his strength. It was his way, and he enjoyed it.

The urge for murder grew stronger after each killing, and the time between each seemed to stretch longer with the increased urge. His hands itched to hold a soft baby's neck, his fingers twitched towards his favorite hunting knife when he thought of happy mothers with their children, and his arms ached to use their taut muscles to snap necks and break brittle baby bones. He had staved off the hunger for murder by using the local squirrels, he still smiled as he remembered their muscles twitching in the breeze as he skinned them alive, but small animals would not last forever. He needed human blood to flow hot over his hands.

The man halted his nervous pacing as he glanced behind him, seeing the disturbed dust settle back over the path his large feet had made. With a silent curse to his lack of self control, the man took a deep breath and let his anxiety exit his body as he exhaled. It was good to be in control, he thought with a chilling grin. The toothy smile faded slightly as his eyes settled on a small pile of bricks peeking through a door at the end of the hall. The dimmed smile turned to a deep frown. The anthropologist had escaped him.

"I'll just have to be quicker next time…" The smirk returned with a chuckle and the middle-aged murderer slid silently into a room filled with wooden planks to plan the details of his next job.

----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ -----------------------------

"Don't you have your own job to do?" Brennan's mood could only be described as irritated, plain and simple. Booth had been hovering over her all day, much to Angela's amusement and Brennan's annoyance.

"Several, actually. Looking after you is only one of them." The hovering man replied with a smile to counter his partner's twitching eyebrow.

"Why don't you go play FBI agent and leave me alone?" Brennan countered, turning away from Booth to try and continue to work with Zach on an old Scandinavian skeleton. With no new leads in the case for her to work on, it was back to the less exciting Jeffersonian duties, though she would never admit that.

"Where's the fun in that?" Booth was now standing directly behind the fiery anthropologist.

"Tell me, what do you find 'fun' about watching Zach work on a skeleton?"

"I'm watching you, remember?" Brennan turned to find herself nose-to-nose with Booth and she resisted the automatic urge to step away.

"You didn't answer my question." She glared up at him, refusing to back down. Booth simply raised his eyebrow in a suggestive manner and smirked. "You're insufferable, you know that?" Brennan rolled her eyes. Booth merely smiled back.

Five minutes passed with Booth continuing to watch Brennan and Zach work, his nose dangerously close to Brennan's ear as he leaned over her. She found herself having major issues concentrating and her mind was racing to find a way to get Booth out of her workspace so she could breathe and cease the trembling of her hands. Booth usually had that effect on her, much to her chagrin.

"Why don't you go look at the house Ranier said he lived in?" she said unexpectedly, sending Booth's head up from near her shoulder. She took the opportunity to turn aroundand face him.

"Why?"

"The date it was vacated is close to Rachel Stevenson's conviction year and you said we don't know if her son is living under an assumed identity. There could be a connection." Booth's mind was rolling, now.

"Shit, Bones, thatcould begenius. When did you think of that?"

"I've been waiting for the best moment to get rid of you." Brennan said in a dry voice.

"That's valuable information. You can't just wait until-"

"I just thought of it, okay?" Brennan defended herself. "Go away."

"Fine, if I knew I was this unwanted…" Booth trailed off.

"Booth..." Brennan said in a warning tone. Booth raised his hands in surrender and began to back away from the table.

"I'll call if I find anything." He said in his departure. Brennan simply raised a hand and jerked it slightly to signal she heard him before turning her attention back to the skeleton on her worktable. Angela was about to pop, though, so work would be difficult even without the FBI agent around…

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Booth took his cell phone out as he exited the Jeffersonian to call Deputy Director Cullen and inform him of his actions. Cullen agreed that the idea was worth checking out, seeing as that was all they had to go on, and he told Booth he was sending Agent Peter Roch out to back Booth up at the house. Booth had worked with Roch a few times in the past and readily agreed. A few more words were exchanged before Booth snapped the phone shut and concentrated on the road.

Roch arrived a few minutes after Booth. Turning the car off, Booth stepped into the street and walked around to greet the other agent.

"You know why we're here?" Booth questioned as the two men walked across the unkempt lawn to a cracked pathway.

"The case with the serial killer that targets single mothers and their sons?"

"We have an idea that something about this house is linked to the case." The door was old and peeling, much like the rest of the neighborhood, but the lock was fairly new. Curious, Booth twisted the knob to find it swung open easily without squeaking.

"It's well oiled." Roch observed from his inspection of the hinges. "Someone's cleaned the rust from the hinges and knob." Booth nodded his agreement and response before drawing his gun. Beside him, Roch did the same. And despite the fact that Peter Roch was a highly qualified FBI agent with a loaded gun, Booth still wished he had Bones backing him up. For some reason, he always felt safer with the unpredictable little scientist at his back. Well, safer from anything and everything but her.

"I'll take the second floor." Booth whispered. Whispering was probably unnecessary, but something about the old building didn't sit quite right with the agent. Roch felt it too, for he nodded and slunk into an adjoining room. Booth quickly made his way up the first three steps and came to a small square landing. From there, the stairway continued up on his left, a wall to his right and in front of him. Turning, Booth held his gun in front of him and lightly stepped up the carpeted wood, his eyes constantly searching the area as his finely tuned senses took control. The uneven dust on the banister and wooden floor unnerved Booth more than the hinges; it was obvious someone had been here recently. The hair on the back of his neck were standing on end as Booth approached the top of the stairs, and he suppressed a chill as it ran down his erect spine.

With three steps left, a plank of wood swung around the solid railing at the top and hit Booth in the chest, sending him spinning towards the banister where he caught it with his free hand and fell. By catching the banister, he managed to turn his body sideways as he rolled down the stairs, an occasional somersault flipping his senses around so that by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he was not only bruised and unable to breath, but disoriented. Roch came running when he saw Booth hurtling down the steps and sprinted past him up the stairs, all the while yelling "FBI!"

Booth's sight cleared enough to see Roch tackle a light-haired man at the top of the flight of steps. Roch pinned the man to the ground and quickly cuffed him before hauling the man to his feet and leading him back down the stairs. Booth watched it all happen without really processing anything. Roch reached him and roughly shoved the man down the last three steps, ordering him to stand with his face to the opposite wall.

"You okay?" Booth nodded as he stood, his vision settling. Upon seeing Booth mobile, Roch returned his attention to the sandy-haired man and led him outside to his car.

Booth checked himself for injuries, trying to decide what hurt the most. The breath had been knocked out of him and he was still having trouble gaining it back. Taking a deep breath, Booth suddenly doubled over in pain as his upper ribs screamed their protest. His back was bruised from the fall down the stairs and Booth felt a headache pulsing at the back of his head. Raising a hand, he gingerly fingered the lump. Booth stepped down the three stairs and headed back outside to join Roch and call ahead to the FBI building to inform them of a possible suspect.

While Roch handled the necessary phone calls, Booth allowed himself a better look at the board-wielding man. He was of average height, with sandy blonde hair and striking green eyes. His stature was nothing special, his face perfectly ordinary, but he struck a chord of recognition within Booth's throbbing head. He couldn't quite place the man, but the subconscious itch was there. Booth quickly flipped through several names in his mind, but none managed to scratch the itch. The slideshow of images finally settled on Jonathan Ranier's face, but Ranier had been dark-haired with dark eyes. The fair man had begun apologizing profusely to Booth since he stepped out of the house, and Booth removed his cell phone from his pocket and turned his back to the man, effectively shutting him up.

At first, Booth just stood with the phone to his ear. He desperately wanted to search the rest of the house; the chill he felt hadn't been from just the man. But he had to return to headquarters with Roch and the suspect. A stab of pain through his chest reminded Booth that he was having breathing issues, too.

"Brennan." Booth didn't say anything at first; pressing the speed dial button was second-nature to him now.

"We found someone in the house." He wheezed.

"Okay." There was a slight pause. "Are you alright? You sound kind of, off…"

"Got the wind knocked out of me and feel down a flight of stairs, you know, typical stuff." Booth replied.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Her concern quickly warmed his heart, the cold feeling he felt in the once-abandoned house fleeing.

"Just some bruises, no worries. I didn't know you cared so much Bones." Brennan swore she could hear his grin.

"Shut up, Booth." She promptly said. "So, who is the person?"

"Says his name is Remy Johanson." Booth turned back around as he said the man's name, watching for recognition at the mention of his name. The man kept his eyes down, spurning curiosity in Booth. "We're stopping by the Bureau to drop Roch and Johanson off then I'll come pick you up."

"Roch?"

"Agent Peter Roch. You weren't there, so I had to have someone backing me up." Booth did not miss the insecurity in her voice.

"Oh."

"Between you and me, Bones, I would have felt safer with you there, even if you don't have a gun." Booth smiled. "See you in a little while." Brennan hung the phone up and Booth imagined her pale cheeks flush at his words. If Angela was near, Brennan would be kept busy until he came to get her.

The large Jeffersonian Institute welcomed Booth with a blast of cool air as he entered the glass doors, his chest still aching and breaths still light and shallow. He stepped to the base of the lab platform steps and raised a hand to wave at Brennan, but he winced when he found he couldn't lift it past his shoulder. Her expression was worried and she quickened her pace as she approached him.

"How did you get the wind knocked out of you, exactly?" She raised an eyebrow and looked at him expectantly.

"Johanson took a board to my chest." Booth replied. Tempe nodded.

"And you're sure it's only bruised?" Booth sighed.

"Now who's being the mother hen?" He grinned. The expression was lost on her, though.

"I don't know what that means." Her confusion only widened his smile, her endearing expression then melting into annoyance.

"Of course you don't, Bones. We need to go interview Roch." Booth leaned forward and took her hand to lead her out of the lab. Brennan followed awkwardly, her piercing gaze settling on their clasped hands and confusion returning to her features. How could a simple touch suddenly send sparks through her? It was illogical and all together physiologically impossible, right?

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Booth held the interrogation room door open for Brennan and she brushed past him with a small smile of thanks. Booth nodded back, going into his interrogation mode. Blank face, emotions when needed, the works. Remy Johanson sat in the cold metal chair with his hands clasped in front of him on the table, his face perfectly calm. Brennan immediately tensed when she saw him; just like with Booth in the house, something did not sit quite right. The man unnerved her, and she was not one for fear or speculation.

"Mr. Remy Johanson, you know why you're here?" Booth sat next to Brennan on their side of the shiny metal table.

"I really am quite sorry about that, I had no idea-" Remy began.

"Answer the question." Booth's tone was hard.

"Yes."

"I am Special Agent Booth and this," –Booth gestured towards Brennan- "is my partner Dr. Brennan." Brennan suppressed a shiver and a frown as Johanson's eyes fell on her. The striking green was off, in a way. Superficial. And his eyes held a degree of hunger to them…

"It's nice to meet you, Ms. Brennan, Agent Booth." He gave her a toothy grin. Booth clenched his jaw and opened his mouth to speak, but Brennan beat him to it.

"It's Dr. Brennan." She automatically corrected him.

"Duly noted, Doctor Brennan." His smile widened as he said her name and Booth had to resist the urge to punch every one of those shining white teeth out of his head.

"Now, Mr. Johanson, why were you in the house located at 5943 River Drive?" Booth steered the conversation back towards the real reason they were there. He noticed the perfect grin that once rested upon Remy's face fall.

"Just looking for a place to stay. The door was unlocked and it looked like nobody lived there, so I didn't think I'd be disturbing anybody." His troubled face turned bright again. "Guess I was wrong, eh?"

"You are homeless?" Booth questioned.

"I prefer the term 'houseless.' The Earth is my home, after all. I simply lack adequate shelter."

"And what makes you say the house had nobody living in it?" Booth resisted rolling his eyes.

"Never seen anyone around there, the grass needed mowing, path was all cracked, and it was real dusty in there." Remy looked pensive as he gathered his thoughts.

"So you must be around that neighborhood a lot, correct?" Remy shook his head.

"Not really. I pass through every day because I found a job selling newspapers at the Glenmark and Leigh Avenue intersection, and I've never seen a car or anything over there."

"You're a pretty smart guy for a houseless person, Mr. Johanson." Booth said casually.

"Had some issues with gambling and I lost everything." Remy grimaced. "But I haven't so much as played a game of Go Fish in months." Brennan stole a glance at Booth when Remy mentioned gambling, but he remained focused and unfazed. It was impressive, she decided. Much like her when she studied skeletons. No matter what, she couldn't let her concentration slip for fear of missing a vital detail. In the interrogation room, Booth never flinched, he kept his focus on the suspect to grab a certain detail from the interrogation and use it later to find contradictions in a story or apply it to evidence and find new leads. An amazing man, truly. Brennan kicked herself under the table to shake the unprofessional thoughts from her mind.

"Mmhmm." Booth replied to Remy's sob-story. Every suspect had one, it seemed. "So, how long have you been going to 5943 River Drive?"

"For a while now, actually." Remy replied.

The interview continued in the same manner; Booth asking his questions, Remy giving his answers, and nobody really getting anywhere. By the time it was over, Booth and Brennan were equally discouraged while Remy was grinning his unsettling grin from ear to ear, his unnaturally green eyes shining with malice or excitement, it was hard to tell.

"I don't like him." Brennan suddenly said as she walked with Booth down the hallway, Remy behind them talking with Cullen about the interrogation circumstances.

"Me neither, Bones, but he hit me with a piece of wood. Did he kick you under the table or something?" Booth's voice dripped with sarcasm, his annoyance at Remy clear. Brennan glared at him.

"He was too confident for someone who was just pulled into an FBI interrogation."

"Maybe he had nothing to hide."

"Or everything." Brennan responded, surprising Booth at her unsupported mental leaps. She hated psychology, yet here she was making guesses based off of Remy Johanson's behavior in the interrogation room.

The elevator came slowly, so while they were waiting, Remy managed to escape Cullen and approach them.

"Sorry I couldn't help more with your investigation, shame what has happened to those poor families over the past few weeks." He said, the smile oddly still in place. Brennan glared at him and Booth glared at Brennan for glaring at Remy.

"How'd you know that?" she asked, curious.

"I've been hanging around there long enough to hear things." Remy answered. "Oh, again, real sorry about the board, Agent Booth. I had no idea who you were, so you can understand my anxiety especially with a murderer on the loose."

"Just surprised me, is all. Didn't hurt a bit so don't worry about it." Brennan rolled her eyes at his attempt to assert dominance through "withstanding pain." Would he ever learn? Remy nodded and turned his unwanted attention back to Brennan.

"Now that that's said and done with, how about you and I grab a drink tonight?" Remy asked Brennan.

"Excuse me?" Brennan looked surprised and annoyed at the same time, not sure if she heard him right. Booth merely raised an eyebrow.

"You know, go to a bar, get a drink, talk a bit." Remy elaborated, waiting for her answer. Booth waited just as anxiously.

"You're still a suspect." Brennan crossed her arms over her chest, her stance defiant as she looked up at the man, her lack of height on him made up in the intensity of her gaze and presence.

"No, I'm not. The FBI is letting me go; I was just discussing that with the Deputy Director over there."

"I'm not FBI." Brennan's tone was cool and level, daring Remy to challenge her.

"C'mon." He grinned. "It's just a drink between acquaintances." He touched her arm lightly and Booth immediately tensed. Brennan's face tightened as her hand curled into a clenched fist.

"It's going to be best for your health and physical well-being to not touch her. Ever." Booth said evenly. Remy's smile dropped with his light and playful attitude, a deep scowl settling in over his face.

"You're hiding something, Mr. Johanson. I plan on finding out what." Brennan said in a dangerously low voice and Booth swore he could hear the angry fire crackling in her eyes.

"Feisty, aren't you?" Remy chuckled though the smile did not return.

"How did you get these scratches?" Brennan countered a question with a question as she pointed at an exposed arm. Booth's eyes widened as Remy pushed his rolled up sleeves down over the deep cuts on his muscular arms.

"I got scratched by a dog." He said carelessly. Brennan obviously didn't buy it, but something else clicked in Booths' mind.

"What kind of dog? A golden retriever, maybe?" Booth asked suddenly, images of Ranier and his energetic dog coming to mind.

"Yes, how'd you know?" Remy asked, curious.

"Lucky guess. Let's go, Bones." Booth pushed the elevator door button again and they stepped into the one on the far left, leaving Remy Johanson to wait for another.

"Goodbye, _Doctor _Brennan." Remy smirked as the elevator door shut. Brennan sat fuming next to Booth, not speaking until they reached the car.

"Sure he got scratched by a dog…" She growled.

"Do you think he's the murderer?" Booth asked, curious as to her opinion on the matter.

"I'm not one to speculate, Booth." Of course she wasn't…

"Humor me, Bones. You've already had a gut feeling today; why not take a guess while you're at it?"

"Honestly? I don't know." She responded after some thought.

"Me neither, but I definitely know he's tied in to this somewhere." Booth voiced his own speculations.

"Why, exactly?"

"He reminded me of Ranier when I first saw him, Ranier had a golden retriever when I spoke with him and said he lived at 5943 River Drive where we found Johanson, and the scratches that you noticed simply tied all of that together." Booth ticked off reasons in his head.

"Didn't you say Ranier had dark hair and dark eyes?"

"Hair dye, color contacts…" Booth shrugged.

"His eye color _was_ very unnatural." Brennan agreed, nodding her head. "But, how do we know for sure? It's not like we can ask him for his DNA to run a comparison to that found beneath Catherine Morrow's fingernails. We don't have jurisdiction."

"_I_ don't have jurisdiction, Bones. You aren't FBI, you said so yourself." He grinned at her before waving his cell phone in the air, one hand on the wheel. "And simple, we just keep an eye on him." She smiled back at him, noticing how his grin was warm and comforting to her unlike Remy's odd, chilling one. The brown eyes sparkled with humor and something else she couldn't quite place, and it gave her warm and fuzzy feelings inside that were foreign to her. Well, less foreign since Booth had shown up, but foreign nonetheless, and no matter how cliché her poor description of the feeling was, she could find no other way to describe it. Remy's face broke up her thoughts of Booth, his eyes staring at her with the chilling green glittering as an unpleasant shiver pulsed up her spine.

Booth noticed her discomfort as thoughts of Remy Johanson invaded her once comforting thoughts and he set his phone on his thigh. Reaching across to her, he took a small hand in his and raised it to his face. Touching his lips lightly to the back of it and giving it a reassuring squeeze, Booth picked his phone back up and dialed Cullen. He noticed Brennan give him a shy, albeit appreciative smile, so he winked at her and returned her smile with a charming one of his own. She rolled her eyes and turned her head towards the window, a small smile playing about her lips as she tried to hide her blush. This only widened Booth's smile as he turned his attention from Brennan to Cullen, though as always, the majority of his mind was filled with his forensic anthropologist. And all were oblivious to the dark eyes hiding beneath green screens that watched them drive away.

"_Shake down you make me break_

_For goodness sake_

_I think I'm on the edge_

_Of something new with you._

_Standing there with your smile blinding_

_Your eyes from seeing_

_My face as I'm dying_

_To figure out a girl._

_You don't do it on purpose,_

_But you make me shake._

_C'mon, sweet catastrophe._

_Well, maybe this time I can follow through._

_I can feel complete,_

_Stop paying dues,_

_Stop the rain from falling,_

_Keep my ocean calm._

_This time I know nothing's wrong."_

_-Something Corporate_

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So, there was your LAST CHAPTER UNTIL AUGUST. I go to a rural place every July for all of July and am without internet access, so I can never update though I have some spare time to write, though not much. I will try to finish the story while I'm gone, though no promises, and I will have an action packed chapter eight for you come August!

**Next Time:** Brennan in danger? Is it Booth to the rescue, or will he be too late? And will we ever find out who the murderer's true identity is? Find out in August! Also, chapter eight will include the 'Typical Reichs Scenario,' as I have dubbed it. Mine will be mostly based off of a part of Déjà Dead.

So leave me plenty of reviews to greet me when I get back from my trip! If you don't, I won't post because I'm mean like that.

PUHLEEEEEEEEEEEEZE REVIEW! I am a desperate review junkie. PLUS I wasn't planning on writing another chapter after chapter six, but then I decided since I love all the reviewers so much that I'd write one more chapter IN ADDITION TO my little ficlet "Til Death Do Us Part" that I just posted. Aren't you all so lucky? -cough review cough- So, I guess the point of this whole thing would be to review, aye? Love you all and I shall see you in August! Rather, you will read my stuff come August… yeah.

Toodles! –throws last of the chocolate Booths-

-Ash-


	8. Be Strong, Believe

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. I have no claim to the lyrics to "Feel the Silence" by the amazing Goo Goo Dolls, and I do not own lyrics to "Back Home" by Yellowcard or "Believe" by them either, though I love all three songs, but all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Chapters: I'm thinking ten or eleven with a possible epilogue. **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 8: Be Strong, Believe**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Thank you to: everybody who has reviewed so far! Special thanks to Anna, as always, just for being there and giving me detailed reviews.**

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry!**

**I AM BACK! Okey-doke, with my return I bringeth thee two new chapters of Cage that were originally one but I have broken them up, and I also have a small one-shot based off a scene in the finale in the making that should appear soon.**

**Here in this chapter we have fun BB banter, cute fluff, and an overall fun chapter of foreboding. Huzzah for paradox! Keep in mind that since I haven't been writing in nearly a month, I might be a little rusty. Bear with me here!**

**SHORTER CHAPTER

* * *

**

CHAPTER RATING: K+

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**Previously: **Booth noticed her discomfort as thoughts of Remy Johanson invaded her once comforting thoughts and he set his phone on his thigh. Reaching across to her, he took a small hand in his and raised it to his face. Touching his lips lightly to the back of it and giving it a reassuring squeeze, Booth picked his phone back up and dialed Cullen. He noticed Brennan give him a shy, albeit appreciative smile, so he winked at her and returned her smile with a charming one of his own. She rolled her eyes and turned her head towards the window, a small smile playing about her lips as she tried to hide her blush. This only widened Booth's smile as he turned his attention from Brennan to Cullen, though as always, the majority of his mind was filled with his forensic anthropologist. And all were oblivious to the dark eyes hiding beneath green screens that watched them drive away.

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"_You lie awake at night_

_With blue eyes that never cry._

_All you remember now _

_Is what you feel._

_Sad like a lonely child,_

_Broken the day you're born,_

_I held the light to you._

_But you move through my soul like a hurricane wind._

_We've been so lost for so long_

_I don't know how to get back again._

_And we're drowning in the water_

_That flows under this bridge._

_When you're fighting the current,_

_You forget how to live._

_And I wanted to reach you but I don't know where to begin._

_And if we feel the silence_

_Holding this all inside,_

_Everything means more now than_

_Words could explain."_

_-Goo Goo Dolls_

Saturday morning came with glistening dew drops and barking dogs, an uneventful day awaiting the tense case just like the day before. Booth had finally met a dead-end; working every available lead, evidence-constructed or conjectured, and combined with their useless interview with Remy Johanson on Thursday, there was no breakthrough. No new murders had occurred, leaving the squints at the lab bored and anxious. Stalemate.

Temperance Brennan arrived at work early Saturday morning to find Booth waiting, his eyes shining like a small child on Christmas waiting for his parents to wake up. He was rocking back and forth on his heels, a boyish grin across his face. Brennan checked her watch; it was six in the morning.

"You're up early." She commented, a small smile twitching across her face at her partner's unspoken and contagious excitement.

"I could say the same." Booth responded, his heel rocking ceasing. Brennan tried to walk around him but he simply stuck an arm out in her path.

"Why are you here?" was her blunt question.

"I can't even come by to say hi?" Booth questioned. The smile Brennan had been trying to hide fell easily into place as she relaxed into their usual banter. After a rather difficult night of uncertainty and apprehension, she was more than ready for her daily repartee with Booth. Crossing her arms over her chest, she settled her weight on one foot and raised an eyebrow at him.

"You're obviously excited about something, and I doubt it's because you were fortunate enough to wake up so early and come to 'squint central.'" He raised both eyebrows in response to this.

"Ah, but how do you know that?" The question was accompanied by a disarming charm smile, and Brennan resisted the urge to turn her head as she willed the imminent blush away.

"I've spent enough time around you to learn a few things about emotional expression, Booth." Booth beamed at her and the expression Brennan had come to know as her warning for a pop-culture reference came up.

"You have learned well, young Padowan." Brennan promptly opened her mouth to respond. "Yeah, yeah. You don't know what that means." Booth sighed. "But that's not important right now because I can legally force you to watch Star Wars later."

"Legally?" Brennan interrupted. Booth rolled his eyes.

"I'm a cop, remember?" He smiled again.

"Why are you here?" Brennan steered the conversation back to more professional matters, ones that wouldn't put unprofessional pictures in her mind involving the handcuffs of a certain 'cop.'

"Well," Booth began, "last night I was doing some serious thinking about Mr. Remy Johanson and I reached an epiphany."

"You're in love?" The quip crossed her lips before she could stop it. A cheeky smile made its way across her face as Booth narrowed his eyes at her and pointed a finger towards her face.

"Now you've been spending too much time with Angela." He shook the finger in a scolding manner. "Besides, he seemed infatuated with you; I have no chance." Booth smiled back at her before returning to his point. "There hasn't been a murder recently, correct?" Brennan nodded.

"The murderer usually kills on Thursdays."

"Exactly! We interviewed Johanson on Thursday."

"Are you saying Johanson is our killer?" Brennan was skeptical.

"Not quite." Booth held both hands up in a 'stop' gesture. "Well, not yet. But this could almost definitely tie him to the case. He must've known we'd be watching him, so he stayed low the rest of the day. According to surveillance, all he did that day was go back to the abandoned house and leave with some boxes after Cullen ordered him to vacate the premises since it housed potential evidence. Since then, he's done nothing more than sell newspapers and visit a local soup kitchen."

"Have you run this by anyone else yet?"

"I will later. Surveillance stops today." Booth looked angry as he said this.

"What? It's only been two days!" Brennan was equally surprised at the news as Booth was angry.

"He's done a good job of appearing clean and is pretty convincing. A regular at the soup kitchen, never misses a day of work, that kind of stuff. Cullen feels the surveillance team would be put to better use elsewhere." Booth carefully outlined the Bureau's reasoning.

"Oh. Do you think you'll be able to change Cullen's decision?"

"I can try, but no promises." Booth sighed, and then smiled. "I hate to leave, but I need to be on time to work to start the day off well." He began to walk back down the hall, leaving Brennan standing in the middle of the large corridor. He suddenly turned back to her, hands in his pockets and a confused look on his face.

"Why are you here early, Bones?" he asked. "Turnabouts only fair." Brennan nervously diverted her glance from Booth's smoldering chocolate eyes, suddenly very interested in a small coffee stain on the linoleum.

"Just getting an early start." She lied. The sudden change of mood was not lost on Booth as he watched her subtly bite her lower lip. The discomfort at a seemingly innocent question peaked his interest, but he decided the topic of discussion was best saved for later.

"Sure, Bones, sure." He replied. "I'll talk to you later." There was a note of promise in his voice, leaving Brennan a bit more relaxed as she watched him turn and leave once again. Instead of feeling nervous at a later conversation, she felt almost relieved. Maybe it would be good for her to share her fears and insecurities of the night with Booth.

Her reason for being early to work was justified. She couldn't sleep at night in her apartment, plain and simple. Since the bricks flew through her windows last Tuesday, Brennan had been sleeping over at Angela's place. But the day before, Brennan decided she was going to head back to her own apartment. The story she told her best friend was that her apartment was ready, but to Booth she told the truth; she didn't want Angela at risk if the murderer came after her again.

Her apartment hadn't been ready in the least. She had put a new lock on her door, but the windows had been covered with black garbage bags and the floor had been littered with glass. The whole place, save for the front door, had been left undisturbed after the crime scene unit left late Wednesday. When a night of no sleep had presented itself to Tempe last night, she opted to fix up the place, though nothing could be done about her windows. With every gust of wind she shied away from the flapping edges of the black plastic.

Brennan listened to her heels click against the linoleum floor tiles as she navigated the empty maze of halls to her office door. The others wouldn't arrive till at least eight that morning. She slipped her key into the lock of her door and listened as the bolt slid back into the door, allowing her access to the safe haven. As she turned the light on, she saw a small wisp of steam rise from a simple Styrofoam cup that sat on her desk, waiting. She cautiously approached the sturdy wooden table, but all apprehension dissipated into the air with the steam when she spotted a small card sitting by it with a familiar scrawl across it. She smiled slightly as she looked at the cup of milky brown liquid and its accompanying note.

_'Think about the love inside the strength of heart._

_Think about the heroes saving life in the dark._

_Climbing higher through the fire, time was running out._

_Never knowing you weren't going to be coming down alive,_

_But you still came back for me._

_You were strong and you believed._

_Everything is gonna be alright;_

_Be strong, believe.'_

_Ryan Key knew what he was talking about, Bones. No matter how tough it is or how hard it seems, just keep pushing on like you have been doing all your life. Be strong and believe in yourself, Temperance. I do._

_-Seeley_

_P.S. The first verse? That's called a song, Bones. Yellowcard's 'Believe.' Check it out sometime, won't you?_

Tempe felt a small lump in her throat as she smiled at the heartfelt words of her partner and she couldn't help but laugh at the postscript. Leave it to Booth to ruin what some might call a 'moment.' She shook her head slightly as she refolded the delicate paper and as she set it back down, her eyes fell on the Styrofoam cup, the word 'Bones' scribbled on it. Laughing again, she picked the cup up and dropped into her chair, slowly sipping the hot chocolate as she booted up her computer for the day.

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Much later that day, and after a most annoying conversation with Angela about Booth's sweet morning surprise where Angela did all the talking while Brennan developed a headache and an insatiable urge to clot her best friend with a paperweight, Tempe was sitting at her desk finishing a report on the authenticity of an ancient bone some teenagers had found earlier that week. An irritated knock broke the quiet of her office just as she dotted her last 'i' and she placed the form in a box on her desk before looking up at an exhausted and frustrated Special Agent Seeley Booth.

"No luck?" She surmised, standing and walking over to him.

"I couldn't get Cullen to keep surveillance because he needed concrete evidence, not the circumstantial situation I laid out for him."

"It's a highly plausible scenario." Brennan defended his idea for him.

"According to Cullen, if the killer wanted to remain anonymous, he would have waited to kill until we took our eyes off Johanson so we'd think it was him and run off on a wild goose chase after homeless people, earning the Bureau a bad rapport with the poverty-stricken people of D.C." Brennan gave him an odd look. "Cullen's words, not mine. Then he went into a speech about counter-circumstantial-evidence or something." Booth let out a frustrated breath before launching into another rant. While he talked, Brennan patiently listened until he ran out of words.

"Feel better?" she asked when he was through.

"A little bit. Sorry about that." He apologized.

"It's perfectly normal for you to feel frustrated towards your superior for denying you a request you thought was reasonable, Booth." She rationalized. Booth allowed himself a half-smile.

"If that's your way of saying 'no big,' that's fine by me, Bones." Brennan smiled back at him. "You done for the night?" he asked.

"Just finishing up some things." She replied, turning back to turn her computer off and pack up her laptop. Stuffing some files into a bag, she set everything on her chair and turned back to him.

"You in the mood for dinner and a drink?" Booth casually asked her. Brennan nodded and retrieved her coat and bag. Turning off the office light and locking the door, Brennan allowed herself to be led down the hallway with Booth's hand resting on the small of her back.

The atmosphere of Wong Foo's wove a comforting blanket around their dinner conversation that night, steering their words towards anything and everything that wasn't related to work. The conversation was pleasant, and though Brennan was enjoying herself immensely, she couldn't shake off the ever present feeling of being watched. She kept expecting a sandy-haired man with unnatural green eyes to pop up at her side, his leering grin haunting her mind. Looking around, though, she saw nobody who fit the profile of Johanson.

"You okay, Bones?" Booth placed a hand over her fidgeting fingers, his warm touch sending fire up her arm. She nodded and smiled as she turned her attention from the people around her back to the man across from her who had yet to remove his hand from hers as he continued to tell her about Parker's latest achievement of riding his bike as far as the driveway without training wheels. Not wanting to worry Booth, Brennan kept her mouth shut and chalked her paranoia up to sleep-deprivation and the standstill case. Her inner Angela, though, just didn't want her to ruin the borderline date/dinner, though Brennan just called it dinner with a colleague.

After dinner, Booth drove her back to her apartment and walked with her through the halls until they reached her door. Opening it slowly, Brennan stepped in and Booth followed her. She removed her coat and set it down before turning back towards Booth. The door was still open and Booth stood just inside the door, watching her with interest. Her hair was messy from walking in the wind outside and even so, she was a treat to look at. Brennan watched his lips curve upwards in a small smile as he watched her and she felt nervous beneath his scrutinizing stare. Looking down at her clothes, she tried to find something wrong with the fitted brown corduroy pants she wore, or a stain on the long-sleeved burgundy red shirt. Finding none, she self-consciously pulled at the clingy fabric of her shirt and glanced back up at Booth. He shook his head at her, still smiling.

"There's nothing wrong at all." He said softly. Tempe gave him a small smile as she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, his unspoken compliment within his statement warming her cheeks. A gust of wind outside swept through the front room, the edges of the black garbage bags fluttering slightly. Booth glanced past her to them, and she knew he now understood her reasoning for an early start. It was like many aspects of their relationship; unspoken agreement and understanding that made them more than just partners and created a deeper bond than a simple friendship. His eyes returned to hers and he stepped towards her.

"Goodnight, Bones." He smiled and leaned forward, hesitating slightly. Brennan felt her heart leap into her throat as she watched him and her eyes fluttered close, her heart pounding. She felt his soft lips brush against her cheek, stubble scraping her skin in an intimate way. The heat of his body separated from hers and she opened her eyes to see him hurrying out of the room and down the hall.

"Goodnight." She whispered after him, a blush heating her neck and cheeks.

As Booth stood in the descending elevator, he found himself smiling to himself. At first fearing a broken relationship with Brennan for a kiss on the cheek had almost stopped him from doing it at all, knowing that even the simplest gesture like that would mean so much more with her. But Tempe's shy smile and relaxed face when he pulled back had given him new hope, though he still found himself hurrying out her door. He had heard her simple 'goodnight' after she thought he had left when really he sat right outside her door, contemplating further action. But he decided the best course of action was to leave his reasoning to their unspoken conversations.

Brennan closed the door and locked it, the shy smile still in place as she went about her nightly routine with a light heart. She floated to her room and changed into red plaid pajama bottoms, the baggy flannel material warm against the cool winds that occasionally seeped into her apartment. She covered the white camisole top she wore with a light gray jacket and she sat on her couch, sipping tea and still reveling in the bliss of Booth's actions. It was amazing how such a simple gesture could have so much meaning when coming from him. In truth, it wasn't so much the actual departing gesture as it was Booth. She smiled as the hot steam curled around her face before finishing the drink and setting the FBI mug (a gift from Booth) into the sink. Brennan checked the lock on her door and other windows before brushing her teeth and settling down into bed, sleep coming easily for her.

"_Don't know_

_What I was looking for when I went home._

_I found me alone._

_Sometimes_

_I need someone to say, 'You'll be alright'_

'_What's on your mind?'_

_But the water's shallow here_

_And I am full of fear_

_And empty-handed after two long years._

_Everybody living here is livin' life in fear of fallin' out of line._

_Tearin' live apart, breakin' lots of hearts just to pass the time._

_And the eyes get red in the back of your head,_

_This place will make you blind._

_Put it all behind me and I'll be just fine."_

_-Yellowcard_

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This was one of those necessary filler chapters. Nice and fluffy for the fluff-bunnies out there, but don't be fooled!

**Next Time:** Picks up right where this chapter leaves off. The murderer makes another appearance with a garrote wire and our favorite forensic anthropologist finds herself in danger once again! Will Booth make it in time or will he be too late? Will we finally discover the murderer's true identity? Answers to some questions revealed in the next chapter which should be up shortly! Give me 10 reviews (at least) and I'll post it ASAP!

Okay, on a reviewing note, please give me a bunch! I just got back yesterday and did not get any chance to write at all for a month and I'm still getting out this chapter today! It's not even August! So make sure to leave lots of reviews to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside then dish out the angsty violence for the next chapter! I love you all; go easy on me since I haven't done anything in a month, and REVIEW!

Lots of chocolate Booths and cookies,

Ash


	9. Only Hope

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. I have no claim to the lyrics to "Shut Your Eyes" or "Open Your Eyes" by Snow Patrol, who are amazing, and I don't own the lyrics to "Promise" by Matchbook Romance, nor "Only Hope" by Mandy Moore because first of all, Switchfoot wrote "Only Hope" and second of all, I just don't. But all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Chapters: I'm thinking ten or eleven with a possible epilogue. **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 9: Only Hope**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Thank you to: everybody who has reviewed so far! Special thanks to Mommy Anna, as always, just for being mommyish and giving me detailed reviews.**

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry!**

**I AM BACK! Okey-doke, with my return I bringeth thee two new chapters of Cage that were originally one but I have broken them up, and I also have a small one-shot based off a scene in the finale in the making that should appear soon. This is the second of the two I bring.**

**Here in this chapter we have DANGER ANGST VIOLENCE WORRYING WOO! This is a chapter Ataea should lurv. Woot.**

**SHORTER CHAPTER

* * *

**

CHAPTER RATING: M for violence and minor language

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**Previously: **Brennan closed the door and locked it, the shy smile still in place as she went about her nightly routine with a light heart. She floated to her room and changed into red plaid pajama bottoms, the baggy flannel material warm against the cool winds that occasionally seeped into her apartment. She covered the white camisole top she wore with a light gray jacket and she sat on her couch, sipping tea and still reveling in the bliss of Booth's actions. It was amazing how such a simple gesture could have so much meaning when coming from him. In truth, it wasn't so much the actual departing gesture as it was Booth. She smiled as the hot steam curled around her face before finishing the drink and setting the FBI mug (a gift from Booth) into the sink. Brennan checked the lock on her door and other windows before brushing her teeth and settling down into bed, sleep coming easily for her.

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"_And when the worrying starts to hurt_

_And the world feels like graves of dirt_

_Just close your eyes until_

_You can imagine this place; you're our secret space at will._

_Shut your eyes, I spin the big chair_

_And you'll feel dizzy, light, and free_

_And falling gently on the cushion_

_You can come and sing to me._

_Shut your eyes and sing to me."_

_-Snow Patrol_

He was calling to her from across the meadow, the tall green grass swaying in the gentle breezes and tickling her legs as she walked towards him. His arms were open towards her, waiting. A full moon was shining in the inky sky, millions of stars twinkling. The dark forest to her left seemed to emit a dangerous darkness that reached out for her and attempted to reel her in, but she could only see him in the moonlight. She reached him and his arms wrapped tightly around her, enveloping her in comfort, safety, and warmth. She buried her face in his chest, suddenly cold and afraid. A scratching noise traveled through the once still meadow and she cracked one eye open and stared at the looming darkness housed by thousands of gnarly trees. The scratching came again, accompanied by rustling branches and a howling wind. The atmosphere was suddenly tense, the once tranquil mood surrendering to a palpable fear she could taste. A branch cracked as two eyes appeared at the edge of the forest, and she heard the eerie scratching noises once more. Still he held her tightly, a human shield. Then he was gone, and the guttural scraping was closing in on her, sharp nails slowly running down her neck leaving the cuts to slowly spill their red, life-sustaining contents to the tainted meadow…

Brennan awoke with a start, her eyes wide and face sweaty. It was just a dream… She heard scratching from the front of the apartment and Tempe's heartbeat increased tenfold. Burying her fear, Brennan slowly untangled herself from the sheets and stepped onto the carpeted floor. Moving cautiously across the carpet, she reached her bedroom door and peeked out into the living room. She saw no one. A forced smile overtook her as she chided herself for her paranoia. It was probably just tree branches against the building or something of the like. Although she had confirmed that the boogeyman wasn't in her living room, Brennan still found herself tiptoeing back to her bed. Lying down, she exhaled the breath she hadn't know she'd been holding and prepared to fall back asleep.

Just as she was beginning to drift, the unmistakable sound of a lock being turned sent her shooting straight up in bed, back rigid and eyes frantically searching for a culprit. She got up once more and crept into the living room, moving slowly and staying against the wall. When she could see the door, she stopped and had to pinch herself to remain quiet. A lone figure dressed in black was closing her door in a painstakingly slow manner. Brennan's breath caught in her throat and she immediately began backing up towards her bedroom. In her retreat to find a phone and a weapon, the floor creaked as she took one wrong step on a bad board, the sound shattering the quiet. Brennan cringed and froze, hoping the man at the door hadn't heard. When she heard his quiet footsteps coming towards her, she turned and flew to the bedroom and slammed the door behind it, throwing the lock and running towards her cell phone on the bedside table. The man's footsteps were no longer disguised and they pounded against the floor as he sprinted to her door.

The phone kept ringing as Brennan frantically searched the room for something to use against the intruder. Just as she was about to give up, Booth picked up.

"Hullo?" was Booth's groggy greeting.

"He's here, Booth! The killer is here!" Her bedroom door flew open as the area around the lock shattered with a hailstorm of wood chips. The man was muscular, that was for sure. He swiftly darted across the room and Brennan twisted out of the way, but he caught a fistful of her hair and yanked. Her head snapped backwards as pain ripped through her neck and head and the phone dropped to the ground, Booth's voice trailing out of the speaker. The attacker smashed the phone to pieces with one heavily booted foot before Brennan sent an elbow into his gut. His grip loosened just enough on her hair for her to pull free and turn to face the gasping man. He quickly regained his composure, though, and put a hand in his pocket. Brennan crouched, ready to dive for cover if he pulled a gun out. Instead, he pulled out a thick wire loop with a thin rope attached to a smaller loop on one side. Brennan narrowed her eyes and glared at him, determined to keep the wire noose off her neck.

The man suddenly lunged towards her, closing the eight foot gap in two bounds. Brennan sidestepped him and sent her elbow into his back as he passed, but he snagged her arm as he ran by and easily threw her in front of him. Brennan landed on her back and rolled backwards, ending up on her knees with her back slammed against the wall. The force of the hit with the wall shook loose a framed picture and it landed beside her, the glass shattering and the wooden frame splintering. Brennan closed her hand around a large piece of the glass and slowly stood up, never taking her eyes off the hulking man in front of her.

He was dressed in boots, black pants and a black-hooded sweatshirt. His face was nondescript, his height average, and his hair was a mousy brown color. He came at her again with a fist raised, and Brennan blocked the first punch before slashing at him with the piece of glass in her hand and kicking his side, causing him to stumble to the left and leaving a path for her to escape from her cornered spot against the wall. Brennan darted past him and turned again, her back to the dresser on the opposite side of the room. The man had turned around and held his garrote wire up, a familiar eerie grin with shining white teeth on his face. The wire was swinging back and forth menacingly, and Brennan found herself taking one step back for each step forward he took.

Her backside hit the lip of the wooden dresser and Brennan half-turned in surprise. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. With one fluid motion, he had the wire around her neck and an arm around her body, pinning her own arms tightly to her side. Her hip bone was digging painfully into the wood and his body was pressed against hers, pushing her forward while he pulled her head back. Blood pounded in her ears and her breath came in short, quick gasps as he slowly twisted the smaller wire loop on the side of the one around her neck, tightening the loop. She could feel the metal dig into the delicate skin of her neck as he pulled and tightened, and soon there was warm liquid running down her neck, the biting wire still tightening while Brennan gasped for breath. With another twist of the small loop, her air supply was cut off completely and black rimmed her vision.

----------------------------------------- ---------------------------------- ------------------------------

"_I'm awake in the infinite cold,_

_Sing to me the song of the stars,_

_Of your galaxy dancing and laughing_

_And laughing again._

_When it feels like my dreams are so far_

_Sing to me of the plans that you have for me over again._

_I give you my destiny,_

_I'm giving you all of me._

_I know now you're my only hope."_

_-Mandy Moore/Switchfoot_

---------------------------------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------------

"Damn phone…" Booth growled as his fingers searched the bedside table for the chirping device. When his hand closed around it, he didn't bother to look at the caller ID and slapped the phone to his ear.

"Hullo?" he growled. A woman's frantic voice came from the other end.

"Here…killer…here," was all he heard over the background noise and the caller's ragged breath. Booth's eyes shot open and he quickly glanced at the call screen to confirm his suspicions. It was indeed his Bones.

"Bones? What's going on? Temperance!" he yelled into the phone. A grunt emitted from the other line followed by a short cry, and then the line went dead. Booth, now fully awake, leapt out of his bed and darted to the closet. As he yanked on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, he kept punching in Brennan's cell number. It was still disconnected. Then he dialed Cullen and gave him the news.

Booth was running down the hallway of his apartment when he finished up the necessary phone calls. Steps were taken two and three at a time as he jumped down the flights of stairs and hit the ground running. Sprinting out of the front door, Booth knocked aside a bellman with an armful of luggage as well as slamming into the old lady who lived down the hall from him. With a short 'sorry' called over his shoulder, he finally elbowed his way through the stubborn door and was running like he had never run before towards his car.

"Please be okay, please be okay." He grimaced; eyes clenched shut as he turned the key in the ignition and deftly swerved through the parking lot towards the main street.

"Please, God, let her be okay." Booth prayed. For all the anonymous victims out there, for everything left unsaid and undetected between them, for Angela and the whole squint squad, and for unrequited love. For them, together.

-------------------------------------- --------------------------------- -----------------------------------

"_And now the stars aren't out tonight,  
But neither are we to look up at them.  
Why does hello feel like goodbye?  
These memories can't replace,  
These wishes I wished and dreams I chased  
Take this broken heart and make it right  
I feel like I lost everything when you're gone,  
Left remembering what it's like to have you here with me.  
I thought you should know  
You're not making this easy.  
I never thought I'd be the one to say  
Please don't, well please don't leave me._

_Take my hand and never let me go."_

_-Matchbook Romance_

-------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ----------------------------------

Choking and twisting in the man's hold, Brennan squeezed her eyes shut and threw her head back. A loud _crack_ filled the room as her head connected with the attacker's nose. He stumbled backwards a bit, arm falling from around her body and grip loosening on the garrote wire. Brennan brought a leg up and kicked backwards as hard as she could. He completely released her when the kick hit him just below the belt and he collapsed to the floor, wheezing. Brennan turned towards him and managed to loosen the wire around her neck just enough to allow oxygen into her burning lungs. As she drew her now slippery hands away from the bleeding flesh of her neck, she saw the killer rise from the floor, one hand pressed to his face where his nose was gushing blood. She smirked; it was broken.

"Bitch…" he grunted, "You'll pay for that with your life." Brennan kept her eyes narrowed at him, trying to place his voice. She knew she had heard it somewhere before. The man staggered towards her and Brennan reached back with a shaky hand to the dresser, adrenaline pounding through her veins giving her the strength to pick up a heavy Terracotta warrior soldier. With her head still swimming from lack of oxygen, she heaved it at the man and smirked again when it hit his shoulder then fell on his foot. The thing was heavy enough to break a toe. He roared in pain and anger before stepping towards her again.

Brennan had no time to react to the fist that he swung at her and the blow landed on the side of her head, sending explosions of white light ripping through her. She flew to the side and crashed into the full-length mirror that stood beside the dresser against the wall. The glass shattered upon impact and sliced into her back as she slid down the metal backing to the ground. A large chunk had slashed through the side of her face and blood flew freely from the injury. Brennan watched the assailant through unfocused eyes as his hand went once again to his pocket. Determined to survive, Brennan jumped up on shaky legs and plowed into him, the force of her attack combined with the surprise causing the man to stumble backwards. Brennan flew past him, fighting back the nausea her swimming head had bestowed upon her and wiping the blood from her eyes. He recovered quickly, though, and regained his balance while flipping a small knife open. The man in black plunged the small knife in her upper back and stepped on the small trailing rope.

As her head jerked back from the suddenly taut noose, Brennan gasped in pain as the cool metal stuck just to the right of her right shoulder blade. Brennan twisted as she fell forwards from the power of his fist against the back of her head and she landed on her back. The taste of coppery blood filled her mouth as she bit her tongue against screaming out; the fall had forced the knife further into her back. The man yanked on the rope again and her head jerked backwards, sending fireworks through her mind. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. _Stay awake, stay awake, you'll die if you don't!_ Her mind screamed at her.

He was leaning over her now, his hand reaching towards her face for the small side loop of the garrote wire. Mustering her last ounce of strength, Brennan brought a foot up and kicked him in the head, sending his body flying back to the door where his head hit the door corner. Then he was still, his breath shallow and blood continuing to flow from his nose and the various cuts she had inflicted earlier with the picture frame glass. Brennan was gasping, the adrenaline rush from earlier long gone, leaving her shaking and weak.

Rolling onto her stomach, she put her bleeding head against the cool hardwood floor and waited for her breathing to slow. It felt so good just lying there and all she wanted to do was sleep…

"Bones!" Booth's unmistakable voice sent her head reeling again with the loss of the quiet. Her head pounded in sync with his pounding fist on her door and she heard sirens outside, the blue and red lights flashing outside her window and sending eerie shadows across the once dark living room. Tempe shakily got to her feet and began to walk towards the front door, concentrating on putting one foot after the other to the floor. She tried to pull the knife out of her back, but the slick handle was slippery with blood and she was about to pass out from fatigue and blood loss. As she staggered towards the door, she kept blacking out momentarily. Booth's incessant pounding kept her awake, though, along with the sound of him wiggling the spare key in the doorknob, trying to gain access. When she was three feet away from the door, it flew open and she fell forwards, the floor rushing towards her face.

With gentle arms, Booth caught the injured anthropologist and he quickly pulled her out into the hallway so others could gain access to the crime scene. As he looked down at her, he set his mouth in a thin line. Booth was about to leave her with the paramedics and go kill the man who did this to her with his bare hands when a young agent named Clark poked his head out of the door.

"She knocked him out cold." He said solemnly before retreating back into the room. Booth turned his attention back to the woman in his arms. Her face was bleeding, a large gash running alone the side of her face. The white camisole she had worn to bed was stained red with blood and the wire and rope apparatus was still around her neck. Booth quickly loosened the wire noose as best he could, cringing when this brought about more bleeding from the torn flesh of her neck. The area around the wound was bruised black and purple.

"You alive, there?" he said quietly.

"You can't get rid of me that easily." Brennan grunted. Booth chuckled. Yep, it was Bones, alright. Booth pulled a long piece of glass out of her arm and set the bloodstained material on the ground. Then Booth noticed the small handle protruding from her back. He touched it and Brennan jerked a bit as it moved.

"I'm going to take this out." He warned her before closing his hand around it and quickly yanking it out of her back, glad it was only a pocketknife. Tempe took in a quick breath and squeezed her eyes closed against the pain. With a hand pressed tightly over the bleeding wound, Booth sent a quiet prayer up, thankful for Tempe's life. Booth eased Brennan back across his lap, one hand under her against the stab wound and the other cradling her head against his chest. She let out a shuddering breath, her grip tight against the front of his white t-shirt, now stained with her blood.

"We got him, Bones." Booth whispered to her, ignoring the fierce ache in his heart at the thought of almost losing her that day.

"Booth?" she murmured, her voice groggy.

"I'm here."

"I'm tired…" she told him, her eyes fluttering close.

"Don't fall asleep on me, here." Booth urged her to remain conscious.

"Hmm…" was her neutral response. Brennan finally slipped into a welcoming darkness just as she felt herself lifted from Booth's arms, EMTs yelling instructions around her.

Booth sat on the floor, watching them cart a very pale Tempe off on a gurney. His eyes burned with fatigue and fear for her life. She was safe from their killer, but she had lost a lot of blood. Booth slowly got up and wandered into the apartment, forensic teams rushing about photographing everything. Blood was everywhere and a team of paramedics pushed by him with a gurney between them, an average man resting atop it with his eyes closed. Booth glared at him, resisting the urge to just shoot him. His nose was squashed and dried blood coated his face. His foot was black and purple, and Booth was pleased to see how much damage Brennan had managed to inflict upon him. When the men passed, Booth took another glance around the place and let out a shuddering breath.

He loved her, plain and simple. He had known that since he flew down to New Orleans to make sure she was okay. Often wondering if she felt the same way, Booth found himself spending more and more time with her outside of work, and he was almost positive she felt something towards him. Angela was convinced she loved him, but Tempe was a confusing person, one where just as you think you've figured her out, something else comes up to send you spiraling off track. And he loved that about her.

Booth tore his gaze away from the couch where they always sat and laughed while eating takeout on Saturday nights and turned back towards the door. How many times had he simply sat out there after she thought he had left, simply wanting to be near her and know she would fall asleep safe? More than he could count. He needed to be with her, needed to know she was okay. And he needed to know that now more than ever. With a final glance around the place that held so many memories for him, both painful and joyous, Booth turned on his heel and walked purposefully out the door.

"_All this feels strange and untrue,_

_And I won't waste a minute without you._

_My bones ache, my skin feels cold_

_And I'm getting so tired and so old._

_The anger swells in my guts_

_And I won't feel these slices and cuts._

_I want so much to open your eyes_

_Cos I need you to look into mine._

_Tell me that you'll open your eyes._

_Get up, get out, get away from these liars_

_Cos they don't understand your soul or your fire._

_Take my hand, knot your fingers through mine_

_And we'll walk from this dark room for the last time._

_All this feels strange and untrue,_

_And I won't waste a minute without you."_

_-Snow Patrol_

----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------- ------------------------

So what did you think of the violent and somewhat romantic chapter? Hope it wasn't a bad one, but this was hard to write because I needed to sprinkle Booth's feelings in it. I don't really have the next chapter planned out, so don't expect too much of me or a really soon update. Of course, if you review, I will be inspired and will write better and faster!

**Next Time:** Find out who the killer is and get questions answered! Brennan comes to terms with some complicated feelings and I have no idea what else to put in this chapter! If anyone has any questions that were never cleared up (like about the case and such) then leave a review or PM me with said question and I will integrate the answer into this chapter.

Thanks to all of you who reviewed that last chapter and who WILL review this one! Love and cookies!

-Ash


	10. We've Only Just Begun

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. I have no claim to the lyrics to Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" or "Can't Help Falling in Love" by ATeens, though I love Snow Patrol. As for ATeens? The lyrics were just so perfect for the last part. I needed some lighter lyrics, so I get a kid's band out. I used to love them, though. Anyways, all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine.**

**Spoilers: Umm... If there are any, minor for the finale, me thinks.**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan. I STILL don't get why I always say that… it's rather obvious, don't you think?**

**Chapters: I'm thinking eleven with a possible epilogue. **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 10: We've Only Just Begun**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Thank you to: everybody who has reviewed so far! Special thanks to Mommy Anna, as always, just for being mommyish and giving me detailed reviews. Another thanks to zelda49 for inspiring me, without knowing, with "You and Me" and I suggest reading that when given the chance, and another special thanks to Wolfy for reminding me not to let this sit for too long. **

**I know ZILCH about Washington D.C., even though I've been there a few times, so I've made up places. Sorry!**

**So sorry for the loooong wait, but this chapter was giving me serious writer's block. I don't like the beginning of this chapter, and overall this was just a bitch to write. Complete writer's block combined with no idea on how to approach the situation equals an angry Ash along with a mediocre chapter. Sorry!**

**WARNING: I did not edit this before posting because I wanted to get it up for all of you, so if there are stupid mistakes, let me know and I'll go back and fix them later today, hopefully… READ ON DEAR REVIEWERS, I LOVETH THEE!**

**CHAPTER RATING: K+** for innocent banter

**------------------------------ ---------------------------- -----------------------------------**

**Previously: **Booth tore his gaze away from the couch where they always sat and laughed while eating takeout on Saturday nights and turned back towards the door. How many times had he simply sat out there after she thought he had left, simply wanting to be near her and know she would fall asleep safe? More than he could count. He needed to be with her, needed to know she was okay. And he needed to know that now more than ever. With a final glance around the place that held so many memories for him, both painful and joyous, Booth turned on his heel and walked purposefully out the door.

**------------------------------ ---------------------------- -----------------------------------**

"_If I lay here_

_If I just lay here,_

_Would you lie with me and just forget the world?_

_I don't quite know_

_How to say_

_How I feel._

_Those three words_

_Are said too much._

_They're not enough._

_Forget what we're told_

_Before we get too old;_

_Show me a garden that's bursting into life._

_I need your grace_

_To remind me_

_To find my own._

_All that I am,_

_All that I ever was,_

_Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see._

_I don't know where,_

_Confused about how as well._

_Just know that these things will never change for us all."_

_-Snow Patrol_

Brennan tapped her pen lightly against her teeth, ignoring the dull, throbbing pain in her neck as she kept her head bent over the paper in front of her.

_Suspects:_

_**Jonathan Ranier**: average height; dark hair; dark eyes; golden retriever; claims to deliver Jenny Allen paper to her; claimed to live at 5943 River Dr;_

_**Remy Johanson**: average height; sandy blonde hair; unnaturally green eyes; ordinary stature; muscular; scratched by golden retriever; sells papers at Glenmark and Leigh Ave.; creepy smile w/ super white teeth; found in 5943 River Dr;_

_**Apartment man**: average height; brown hair; Johanson smile; nondescript face; very muscular; very white teeth; blue eyes?; _

_**Michael Stevenson**: Rachel Stevenson's son; 43 years; mitochondrial DNA same of DNA found beneath Morrow fingernails; disappeared in 1984; 5943 River Dr. empty since 1976, Rachel convicted of child abuse in 1975, connection?; _

Booth had called about thirty minutes ago, letting her know that they finally had a positive ID on their serial killer. He should have arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes earlier, but the FBI agent was nowhere in sight. While waiting, Brennan compiled a list of their possible suspects, trying to link the case together and identify the murderer. But her head still throbbed from the attack on her life two days ago, and concentrating was difficult. Dropping the pen to the blankets, Brennan leaned back in the bed and put a hand over her eyes, the harsh light of the room bothering her.

"Wake up, sleepy Bones!" The all too cheery voice of Seeley Booth brought Brennan back from a dream involving shattering mirrors and men in black hooded sweatshirts. Booth was standing over her, his face inches away from hers. Turning her head slightly, Brennan saw that it was dark outside.

"You're six hours late." She stated calmly, waiting for Booth to move his head so she could sit up. His nose remained almost touching hers, though, his warm breath hitting her face and bringing goosebumps to her arms.

"I came by earlier, but you were sleeping." Booth finally straightened up, pulling a chair over from the side of the room and plopping down into it. Brennan pulled herself to a sitting position, ignoring the pain in her arm, back, and head.

"I was only resting because you were late then, too." Brennan retorted, angry at herself for falling asleep. Booth rolled his eyes, easily picking up on the root of her frustration and annoyance.

"Now don't be mad at yourself, Bones. You should be sleeping, anyways, not making lists of suspects and trying to figure out murder cases right after someone tried to kill you." Booth held up her pad of paper from earlier and dropped it on her lap. "Now, before I reveal the identity of our special friend, I'm going to read over the list of injuries your doctor put together for me. If there is anything missing or untrue, you need to speak up so that this is ready for the trial later." Brennan nodded and Booth pulled a sheet of paper from a manila file in his hand.

"Okay, strained neck, bruised back, stitches in the right hand, back, arm, and face." Booth stopped and pulled a pencil out of his bag. "How many in each, Bones? Doc neglected to mention that vital information." Booth grumbled.

"Six in the right hand, a total of seven in the back, twelve on the right arm, and nine on the right side of the face." Brennan told him, fingers playing with the blanket as she recited numbers and facts. Booth hated bringing everything up so soon, but he had to. After writing the numbers down, he put the pencil down and placed a hand over Brennan's fidgeting ones, the movement calming as he did. She looked up at him, her blue eyes reflecting anger at the man who hurt her, vulnerability as she sat there and relived that Saturday night, and gratefulness towards the man who sat with her and pulled her through everything. Booth smiled gently at her and only when she returned the gesture did he release her hands and continue with his notes.

"A bruised hip, stab wound to the right of the right shoulder blade, minor concussion, and the mark around your neck from the garrote wire." Booth finished the list and looked up to see his partner unconsciously reaching up with her left hand to touch the angry red mark that circled her pale neck, the delicate skin only just beginning to heal.

"Who did it, Booth?" She said, turning her eyes from the wall to his. "Who murdered all those people?" She was ready for her answer, and Booth was ready to give it to her.

"Well, Bones, who do you think it was?" Booth gestured towards the list that sat on the white hospital blanket. "You're guess was as good as mine before I was told."

"Well," Brennan began, glancing down at her paper. "I thought it was Remy Johanson. The man in my apartment had the same voice, stature, and smile as him, though his appearance greatly differed from Johanson's." Booth smiled at her. "Am I right?" she asked upon seeing his smile.

"Almost." Booth replied. "You remember when you told me to gather all that mitochondrial DNA information?" Brennan nodded. "When we found that Rachel Stevenson had identical mitochondrial DNA to that of the DNA found beneath Catherine Morrow's fingernails, we put her son Michael as the number one suspect. But with no information to his whereabouts, we were at a standstill. So I got some people working on possible identities of the man. When he disappeared in 1984, another person by the name of Austin Johnston came into existence, a guy who hadn't existed before that year. It was a long shot, especially since there were thousands of others who could have come up with another identity, but something felt right about this guy, so we followed him. Johnston had a minor police record and didn't last long before another identity came up, a guy by the name of John Malloy. This felt right, too, so we followed it just like with Johnston.

"Our trail of people eventually gave us a pattern. All the names had some root in the name 'John' just like Jonathan Rainer and Remy Johanson. Someone did a little more poking around into Michael Stevenson's past, and turns out his real name is Michael John Stevenson, thus the 'John' names. Johnston, Malloy, Johanson, and Ranier are all the same person."

"Stevenson." Brennan said. Booth nodded and flipped a page in the folder.

"Stevenson began using different names and committing various crimes under those names in 1984 when he was twenty-one years old. Mommy Rachel was convicted of child abuse because she reportedly beat Stevenson and mentally abused him as a child. The kid had anger issues after that."

"I don't see why he wouldn't." Brennan commented dryly. Booth agreed with her before dropping his eyes back to the paper.

"Skipping a few years ahead to 1993, we found someone by the name of Jeremy Stevens who spent time in a mental hospital a couple hundred miles north of here."

"The name deviates from the pattern, though." Brennan interjected.

"True, but the name before Stevens was Steven Jenkins and the guy's activities and living pattern followed that of Stevenson, plus Steven and Stevens are linked to Stevenson, so we kept with it." Booth explained. "And the guy had some interesting problems at the mental institution, too. A counselor report hypothesized reasoning for Stevens' behavior, and that reasoning was a troubled childhood involving mental abuse, and that matches Stevenson's history.

"Stevens spent one and a half years at the institution until he left one day with a group to go out as a reward for good behavior and he never came back. Before, he was diagnosed with depression, mild schizophrenia, a split personality, and was classified as a sociopath." Booth read from the medical records in the file, surprised at the extent of the man's problems.

"Did he have a specific motive to kill all the families?" Brennan asked the question that had been bothering her.

"We were questioning him earlier and the man is surprisingly cooperative for a crazy guy. He says he killed them because they didn't deserve the happiness they had. Jealous of the loving relationships in the families, he would kill them."

"And I'm guessing his connection to the neighborhood is 5943 River Drive?" Brennan assumed.

"He lived there until 1976. Rachel was convicted of child abuse in 1975. He really moved out in '75, but the rent was paid for up through '76 which is why our records of who lived there stopped then instead of the conviction year. Stevenson returned to the house and was living there. He had his Johanson disguise on when Roch and I raided the house."

"And he killed Jenny Allen and James Henry Allen because?"

"Jenny was related to James Henry and she began poking around as best she could when he went missing, and James Henry was murdered when he walked in on the murder of Catherine Morrow." Booth read from the interview notes at the back of the file.

"Innocent bystanders." She commented.

"Innocent bystanders." Booth agreed. They were both quiet for a few minutes, Brennan turning the new information over in her head while Booth studied her. She seemed to be healing nicely, but he knew there was more to her pain than the obvious physical injuries.

"So, what do we do now…" It was more of a statement than a question. Booth chuckled and stood up, smiling.

"You, my dear Bones, will sit in this hospital bed until deemed healthy enough to get up and leave. I, on the other hand, will now leave you to the doctors in white to go and eat greasy food from Sid's while you are served hospital brand gelatin." There was a wide grin on Booth's face as he said this. Brennan raised one eyebrow in response.

"Well, you're a kind person to leave your partner here with hospital food." She returned the jibe with one of her own, both settling back into their banter. Anything was a better alternative than talking about the case victims.

"That's me, Bones. I'll see you tomorrow." Booth leaned over the bed and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, something he had been doing recently to say goodbye. At first, Brennan had been uncomfortable with it, but after the past two days, she had grown used to it. In fact, she could even say she looked forward to it, even if it meant Booth leaving for a while.

"Bye, Booth." She smiled back at him as a nurse entered the room to usher him out.

"Visiting hours were over three hours ago, sir." She said crossly. Apparently, she had already had this conversation with Booth. He nodded at her before turning back one last time to wink at Brennan. She raised both eyebrows this time, though a light blush played about her cheeks.

---------------------------- ---------------------------- ---------------------------------------------

"I missed you today." She suddenly said, her bright blue eyes turning to his chocolate brown ones. Booth's face turned pensive as he turned her statement over in his head.

"I knew it; you can't live without me." He cheekily replied. Brennan rolled her eyes and suppressed a smile.

"No, I mean I didn't see you earlier. You always come by during lunch and I missed you as in I did not see you." Brennan rescued herself from a potentially embarrassing situation as Booth tried not to burst out laughing at the pink that tinged her cheeks.

"I came by earlier and you were sleeping, again." Brennan frowned at this. "I didn't want to wake you."

"Again?" He nodded his response at her question. She sighed. They both turned their attention back to the TV in front of them just as a man with long black hair and eyeliner ran across the screen, handcuffed arms held out in front of him as people in red coats shot at him.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" A though suddenly occurred to her and Brennan turned her head towards Booth, wincing as pain shot up her neck. Booth flipped his attention from the movie to the woman in the hospital bed and smiled. Some things never change.

"I told you, Bones, we have more than enough to book this guy fore life. At least ten counts of first degree murder, many attempted murders, counterfeiting, and we've only just begun to look into the past few years." Booth told her. "All that's left is for you to heal enough to testify on both personal and professional accounts, okay?" Booth let his gaze wander over her face and down her bare arms. His wandering eyes finally settled on the once perfect skin of her neck. An angry red mark still circled her pale neck like a choker, no pun intended. The skin around the red wasn't as colorful as before, but hints of blue and black were still noticeable.

Brennan noticed him studying her neck and she self-consciously brought a hand up, suddenly ashamed of the marks littering her skin. Looking back, she felt she could have done more to stop the man sooner.

"It's okay, Temperance." Booth gently pulled her hands back. She shook her head.

"No, I shouldn't have come out this bad. If I had taken him while he was trying to close the door, if I hadn't gone back to sleep after the first noises, if I had checked the alarm more thoroughly-"

"If he hadn't made any noise during his entry, if he had known what you could do to him in a fair fight, if he had a gun…" Booth's eyes were fiery as he talked to her, the smoldering emotion surprising Brennan while she struggled not to look away. "There are too many 'ifs' in this world, Bones. They don't matter. The important thing is that you heard him and managed to break his nose, three toes, and give him a concussion while you were bleeding profusely and being choked to death with a knife in your back. Your alarm was tampered with, we've been over that, and he didn't know that the forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan could double as a street thug. You're alive, Bones!

"I wouldn't care if he got away as long as you're breathing. You're what's important, Temperance. Not the bad guy." Booth gave her a tiny smile. Brennan, on the other hand, could only stare in wonder as she slowly processed everything Booth had just said. Her eyes dropped to their hands, her own looking very small and pale in his large, tanned ones. Booth watched her with interest, wondering how she would react. He hadn't meant to spill all of that; just the first part.

"Sweetie!" Angela entered the room, the hospital door slamming against the wall. As it swung close and then open again, Brennan could see the same nurse that had ushered Booth out two days before sitting there with a frown on her face, Hodgins and Zach behind her. The ebony-haired artist paid no mind to the nurse's disapproving look at her un-hospital-like behavior and flew across the room to throw her arms around her best friend, wary of Brennan's still healing injuries. Brennan took her hand from Booth to return the hug, but surprised both him and herself when her hand found its way back into his.

"How are you holding up?" Angela grinned widely, plopping down on the edge of the bed. Brennan frowned.

"It's been four days and I want to go back to work." She replied. Angela and Booth laughed.

"No way, honey. You have at least another week, and Goodman hasn't even put his verdict our there yet."

"Yeah, Bones. I'm not letting you near that place for at least three days after you've been released, and even after that, you're not working again for a few more days." Booth readily agreed with Angela. Brennan turned to Zach and Hodgins for help.

"I have to side with Angela on this one, Dr. Brennan." Hodgins claimed. "I'd like to hold onto my life for a few more years." He added when Angela turned her glare to a smug smile at his compliance with her wishes. Zach just nodded when Angela turned to him, his teacher's stern glare now settled on him as well as Angela's gaze. Brennan turned back to Booth, not noticing both Hodgins and Zach visibly relaxing as she turned the heat onto her partner, and removed her hand from his to poke him firmly in the chest.

"You're not in charge of me; you can't tell me when I can go back to the Jeffersonian." Brennan fumed.

"A restraining order can…" Booth muttered, clearly enjoying this just as much as Angela was.

"Excuse me?" Brennan's voice was dangerously low as Angela and Hodgins snickered. Zach chose to remain silent, lest Brennan turn her steely gaze on him again. Booth smiled and decided to drop the bomb; when he told Angela of Brennan's release obligations, she had squealed loudly as was expected. Brennan's reaction, though, was going to be the exact opposite. How Booth loved making her angry; she was just so cute.

"Look Bones, you're being checked out of here in an hour-" her face instantly lit up, "-into my care," the scowl did not appear immediately, Booth noticed with glee, "so technically, I can control when you go back to work. Plus I have the squints on my side." Booth added with a grin.

"Sure, just go ahead and turn my team against me." Brennan replied. Booth noticed the gentle twitch of her lips as she tried not to smile at the thought of finally leaving. "But I'll have Dr. Goodman on my side; I'm sure I'll be needed back at work within the week. You do know that these FBI cases are seriously cutting into my obligations back at the Jeffersonian, don't you?"

"I'm sure I can turn your boss against you, too, Bones." Booth grinned. "He won't be able to resist agreeing with me." The last line was said with Booth's trademark charm smile. This time, Brennan allowed a smirk to cross her face.

"I doubt it, Booth. Goodman's married." Angela burst out laughing at Brennan's statement and Booth's smile dropped from his face in an instant. Hodgins and Zach both began cracking up as Booth crossed his arms and glared at Brennan. She smiled right back at him, seeing the playful gleam in his eyes, telling her he wasn't really mad.

True to his word, Booth had her out of the antiseptic-smelling hell within the hour. It would have taken less time, but the FBI agent knew Brennan well enough to add in an extra thirty minutes of argue-time over the hospital policy of leaving in a wheelchair. Brennan, of course, won that argument.

"_Wise men say only fools rush in,_

_But I can't help falling in love with you._

_Shall I stay?_

_Would it be a sin_

_If I can't help falling in love with you?_

_Like a river flows surely to the sea,_

_Darling, so it goes_

_Some things are meant to be._

_Take my hand, _

_Take my whole life, too,_

_For I can't help falling in love with you."_

_-ATeens_

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**Next Time:** Some fluffy angst on the subject of love.

I have most of the next chapter planned, but I don't know when I'll be able to post it. I have so much homework, as you can tell since I haven't updated in forever, and I am very apologetic about that. For instance, tomorrow I have an Algebra II honors test and a Spanish III honors test in addition to a major composition in English class. Mine's twelve pages long, and the second longest in our class is six. That says something, doesn't it? Anyways, please review! Reviews make me happy and get me through the school week, and they inspire me to write. If I get enough inspiration, the next chapter should come fast. You have no idea how guilty I felt about not posting… SORRY! I love you all and I throw lots and lots of cookies and chocolate Booths out to all the lovely reviewers. Farewell!

Until the next chapter,

Ash


	11. Learning to Fall

**Story: Cage**

**Disclaimer: I happen to own… NOTHING! Everyone belongs to FOX…. Damn. I have no claim to the lyrics for "Learning to Fall" by the highly esteemed and super talented Martina McBride. Love this song. Anyways, all other neighbors, victims, murderer dude and other people are mine. I have spent much time creating bios for them and thinking of what gruesome way they died, so they are mine.**

**Spoilers: None, me thinks**

**Pairing: BoothxBrennan, still hehe**

**Chapters: I'm thinking eleven with a possible epilogue. **

**Summary: It's hard to find relief in the world, and people can be so cold. Their latest case has affected Temperance more than she would have liked, and she finally sees how lucky she really is to have a man like Seeley Booth at her side to guide her through the darkness and show her the light of human nature.**

**Chapter 11: Learning to Fall**

**Note: This started as a pure fluff fic, just for some BrennanAngstBoothComfort type thing, but I turned it into a case file for the last few chapters, so stick around after the fluff to find action, violence, and more fluff! Review please! -Ash**

**Thank you to: those who have remained my loyal reviewers through my one-shots while I guiltily ignored this story... but hey, I'm BACK WITH IT!!**

**IT'S BACK!! -cue 'Back in Black'- Alright so it took long enough but I heard a new song from watching a Bones video on YouTube called "Learning to Fall" by bccalling. The other video inspiration that I saw first and prompted me to really get this going was "Used To" by Katie7390. That is the single most amazing video ever. I recommend watching it after you REVIEW this and read lol.**

**Please review for me! I really would like to break the 200 mark, but after leaving this for so long, I can understand if I lost some people along the way.**

**Super note!!: This is a highly reflective chapter with emotions and lovely stuff like that in it, so be prepared for analogies and metaphors and Brennan thinking and Booth watching. Yep yep.**

**CHAPTER RATING: K+ just because**

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"_I was alone in the dark,_

_Never let down my guard._

_Closed the curtain on my heart_

_So the world could not see_

_All the demons in me._

_Told myself I was free."_

The drive home from the hospital had passed in companionable silence until the two had reached Brennan's home. Booth won the argument over who cooked dinner, and Brennan was secretly glad she didn't have to do anything. Although she would never in a million years admit it, she was in pain. A lot of it. And that was with her pain medication, too. She didn't even want to imagine what it felt like cold turkey.

Brennan stood at the doorway to the main room, watching Booth in the kitchen. She held a small smile on her face as she silently laughed at Booth tossing this and that into a boiling pot of something or another. She couldn't suppress the slight giggle that escaped her lips when he flipped a small container of oregano into the air from behind his back and caught it above the pot, the spice sprinkling itself into the mix as he whistled and shook it a bit.

He looked back over his shoulder and smiled when he heard her twinkling laugh. She was standing at the doorway, but even at that distance, he could see the purple and blue on her face and the ring circling her delicate neck. Her right arm rested in a sling the doctor gave her so the stitched on that arm would not break. He also said that by immobilizing her right side, the wound to her shoulder blade could heal faster and some strain would be taken off of her neck. She still had difficulty turning her head.

Her smile stretched up the left side of her face, the right still stitched up. Brennan's hair was still damp from her shower and she pushed off the wall and stepped into the room, her heart melting as his eyes locked on hers.

"Smells good," she commented as she drew closer to the bubbling pan.

"It better." Booth was all smiles. "Homemade spaghetti is one of my specialties."

"So you have specialties now?" Brennan returned his beaming grin with a small one of her own. He nodded and winked as he handed her a glass of wine.

"Now go relax until I'm finished with this sauce." Brennan took the glass and walked to the living room, not realizing how tired she was until she sank down into the couch. Booth was still whistling in the kitchen and she couldn't help but think about just how right this felt. Him cooking in the kitchen while she rested with a glass of wine in the living room, waiting for him to come out and say, "Dinner's ready!" It was such foreign yet familiar scene. She saw her mother holding a pan of grilled chicken as she stood in the kitchen door, telling her father that dinner was ready and to get the kids to wash their hands. It was such a domestic scene, one Brennan knew she wouldn't mind getting used to…

Brennan always thought she had everything figured out; it was all covered and categorized according to her knowledge and observations. She thought she was fine alone with her work, so she shut off her heart with her own version of the Great Wall. A wall forged with the strongest stone and the hardiest mortar: seemingly impenetrable. And for awhile, it was. Angela had her own little spot stationed halfway up the wall, a little peephole between brick, but it took her forever to achieve that spot and drill her way through just enough to catch a glimpse of what hid behind the wall. Brennan didn't want to open up to anyone or show how she really felt. And it worked for a time.

She thought she was free from the hindrance of emotion as she perceived it when really she was a prisoner to her own rationality and mind. Booth showed her the truth, though.

"_Then you showed me how wrong I could be."_

He came along and she could finally see what she could have: what she should have. He wanted to show her what she should have with him, and though she resisted, his persistence was slowly chipping away at her resolve; at her wall.

"_Now I'm standing on a mountain of rubble_

_That once was a wall._

_Took years to build around me_

_And you came along_

_And you tore it down_

_Like it was nothing at all._

_Now it's a little scary_

_Learning to fall."_

It had been an accident, really. None of it was supposed to happen. It took her years to build and fortify her defenses, but it only took him a minute to make that first crack in the stone. And she let him.

As Brennan sat and watched Booth dumping spaghetti into black pot of boiling water on her stove, she wondered just how he had managed to do it so quickly. There had been other men before him, sure. She even thought she had feelings for some of those men, but they never even got close to what Seeley Booth could do. Sometimes she felt like clay in his hands; a mere tool he could use any way he wanted to if he tried hard enough, but he never did. He let her have her independence and he let her stand on her own two feet. And then Brennan knew why he had crumbled the prison around her.

All along, she had been helping him. She gave him the tools of her past and of her true compassion to give him easier passage through. She comforted him when the going got tough, and he never rested. Even while she slept, Seeley Booth was hard at work making sure every little piece of the high walls was crushed beneath his love and strength. And when she was awake, he weakened the foundation with every look, every smile, every touch. And she let him.

"Bones?" Booth waved an oven mitt-clad hand in front of her face as she tore her mind away from the barrage of thoughts towards the men those thoughts centered around, though he was oblivious to that.

"Yes?"

"Dinnertime." He smiled at her and held out the plate of rolls he had just pulled from the oven, thus the red oven mitts with reindeer all over them.

"Nice mitts, by the way." Booth commented with a chuckle as he tossed them onto the counter.

"Angela gave them to me last Christmas. She said I would have more use for them than her." Brennan stated. Booth studied her face for a second, and once again Brennan felt ashamed of the marks that littered her skin.

"Are you okay, Bones?" His face was concerned as he watched her eyes. She tried to say she was fine, but the words caught in her throat. What was ready to jump out of her mouth was that no, she wasn't fine. His task of breaking her down was nearly complete and she was scared. Brennan was standing on a mountain of crumbled stone, and he was waiting for her at the bottom. All that was left for her to do was to come down to him. She had to learn to trust him with not only her life, but her love. She had to learn to look past strength and independence to the weakness he could support. She wasn't ready for that, and that was what scared her most of all.

His rich chocolate eyes were locked on her tormented cerulean eyes, a conundrum of thoughts and feelings forming a mangled maelstrom of confusion just past the surface of her gaze. She'd like to think that Booth couldn't see past what she tried to show, but she knew him better than that. He could look past fear, bravado, shows of courage, and imperfections. He always had; he could always see her, and only her. He could see the love she hid so well, she was sure of that. She could see the same thing reflected in his eyes, a shining beacon.

Love was real to Seeley Booth, and that was enough for her.

"_When you looked in my eyes,_

_Past the fear and false pride,_

_You saw the goodness inside._

_I can't believe how I feel,_

_I believe love is real_

_And I'm ready to heal._

_You show me how right I can be."_

Before, Brennan thought the last few crumbling stones were from their latest case, but no. It had been Seeley Booth all along, patiently and diligently pushing his way through to where she sat broken in the center, waiting for something she thought would never come. But it finally came in the form of her knight in shining FBI-issued body armor. Brennan could finally believe in the intangible, and she found that she wanted to. It was another step in healing her heart and soul. Booth showed her how right she could be, and now she wanted to be that person.

Brennan's breath came short and quick, and Booth never lifted his eyes from her own. He could see a battle taking place beneath an otherwise calm exterior, his only clue being her wide eyes. The shadow of fear settled over his favorite shade of blue, his favorite color, and he sat down next to her with his hands over hers as he patiently waited. Patience had gotten him this far, after all.

She was scared: so scared. All she wanted to do was to collapse into his arms and tell him how much she loved him, but she wasn't ready yet. Brennan opened her mouth, but no words came out. She tried again, but Booth silenced her with a finger to her trembling lips.

"Shh, Temperance. I can wait. If you're not ready, I will wait." He spoke softly and with understanding. "Don't force it. I love you, Temperance, and I can wait until you're ready." Booth removed the finger from her lips and his hand found its way to the side of her head. He stroked the auburn hair back behind her ear, his eyes compassionate as he gazed into hers. He would wait for her, no matter how long it took. He understood, and he loved her despite insecurities and imperfections. She loved him for loving her.

After holding onto sorrows, grudges, false happiness, and clinging to the cliff of reason, Brennan finally felt ready to let go. And she fell. It was scary, the fall, but she knew that when she reached the ground, she would fall right into Seeley Booth's waiting arms, and everything would be okay. She could finally leap off her mountain of broken barriers, and she could finally be free. A world of promise waited for her in him, and now she was ready.

"I love you, too."

"_I was holding on, now I'm letting go."_

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What'd you think of the ending?? I'm posting this without edit so you guys can get to the reading but when I wake up tomorrow morning I'll go back and proof it. Give me reviews not only because I love reviews and I really want to surpass the 200 mark, but also let me know if this needs an epilogue or if anything went unanswered. I tried to get everything in, but I went in a completely different direction than where I first thought I was going to go with the ending of this.

Anyways, I hope you all really liked this story!! It's been fun writing it and FINALLY finishing!! Love you all, lovely reviewers and readers alike, and I happily send personalized boxes of chocolate Booths to each and every virtual door belonging to those that review!!!!

-As always, Ash.

**Look for:** New song fics and one-shots from me!! I have no big fics planned at the moment, just lots of fluff and angst ficlets floating around in my head.


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